L'impatto distributivo dei tributi locali: un'applicazione sul comune di Modena

This paper studies the distributive impact on households of the main forms of taxation that municipalities can apply in Italy. We use a representative sample of microdata referring to households living in the town of Modena, and simulate on their incomes the effects of three taxes: a real estate tax, a surcharge on the personal income tax applied at the national level, and a tax on waste disposal. Their distributive impact is evaluated on two indicators of economic well-being: first disposable income, and then a new indicator that takes into account also the level of real and financial assets owned by the household. The simulations suggest that the overall impact is mildly progressive, since the real estate tax is able to compensate the strongly regressive effect of the tax on waste disposal.