Bilingual background report to "Taxation and household saving"/"Fiscalité et épargne des ménages". This questionnaire survey on how different types of savings by households are taxed in each of the OECD countries shows how each country views its own tax system.

This report provides a detailed review of the taxation of household savings in 40 OECD and partner countries.

This paper analyzes anew the relationship between taxation and the household saving rate. On the basis of standard savings and tax revenue data from, it provides compelling and robust empirical evidence of a powerful impact of taxes on household savings. In particular, income taxes are shown to affect negatively the household saving rate much more than consumption taxes.

The declining U.S. national saving rate has prompted economists and policymakers to ask, should the federal government encourage household saving, and if so, through which policies? In order to better understand saving programs, this volume provides a systematic and detailed description of saving policies in the G-7 industrialized nations: the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Each of the seven chapters focuses on one country and addresses a core set of topics: types of accumulated household savings and debt; tax policies toward capital income; saving in the form of public and private pensions, including Social Security and similar programs; saving programs that receive special tax treatment; and saving through insurance. This detailed summary of the saving incentives of the G-7 nations will be an invaluable reference for policymakers and academics interested in personal saving behavior.

This paper analyzes the empirical determinants of household saving using data from 21 OECD countries for 1975-95. A particular focus is the influence of the tax and social security systems on household saving. The paper therefore extends the usual set of explanatory variables used to explain household saving behavior to include variables that capture the structure of the tax system and the financing and generosity of the social security and welfare system. These variables are found to have an important impact on household saving. Accordingly, by changing the design of these systems, governments may be able to influence saving.

This paper develops and tests a model of Japan’s household savings rate, based on the life-cycle hypothesis that the primary motive for savings is provision for retirement. The paper shows that Japan’s high household savings rate in recent decades reflects the positive influence of rapid economic growth, leading to a prolonged retirement period through the wealth and life-expectancy effects of an income change, which has initially outweighed the negative combined influence of improvements in public pension benefits and the aging of the population. It projects that the savings rate will decline substantially in coming decades as the negative influence accelerates.

Governments and corporations may chip in, but around the world houshold saving is the biggest factor in national saving. To better understand why saving rates differ across countries, this volume provides the most up-to-date analyses of patterns of household saving behavior in Canada, Italy, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Each of the six chapters examines micro data sets of household saving within a particular country and summarizes statistics on patterns of saving by age, income, and other demographic factors. The authors provide age-earning profiles and analyses of the accumulation of wealth over the lifetime in a clear way that allows quick comparisons between earning, consumption, and saving in the six countries. Designed as a companion to Public Policies and Household Saving (1994), which addresses saving policies in the G-7 nations, this volume offers detailed descriptions of saving behavior in all G-7 nations except France.

NOTE: NO FURTHER DISCOUNT FOR THIS PRINT PRODUCT--OVERSTOCK SALE -- Significantly reduced list price This document, prepared by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, provides a description and analysis of the revenue provisions modifying the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (the "Code") that are contained in the President's fiscal year 2011 budget proposal, as submitted to the Congress on February 2010. The document generally follows the order of the proposals as included in the Department of the Treasury's explanation of the President's budget proposal. For each provision, there is a description of present law and the proposal (including effective date), a reference to relevant prior budget proposals or recent legislative action, and an analysis of policy issues related to the proposal.