Tax increases are always a problem.

On the one hand, they bring the state money that it often urgently needs.

On the other hand, high taxes threaten to discourage people from working.

It is reported from the employees of the railway that one or the other decided to take additional vacation days instead of a salary increase.

Because you don't have to pay taxes on them.

Advocates of tax increases doubt that this is actually a large-scale phenomenon.

But now a new study shows that the effect is clearly measurable - and it is above all the smart people who reduce their working hours when taxes rise.

Patrick Bernau

Responsible editor for economy and "value" of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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The study comes from Sweden, a country where people are used to high taxes.

Income tax goes there first to the municipalities.

Only if someone earns more than a certain amount at work does the state as a whole also receive taxes, namely an additional 20 percent of the part of the income that is above this limit.

That's currently the equivalent of 52,000 euros a year.

These are income regions where you still have to watch your money.

Anyone who deliberately stays below the limit will feel it in their own wallet.

Still, many choose to do just that.

The income limit changes entire life plans.

Four ways to stay below the income limit

Spencer Bastani works at the Swedish Labor Market Policy Evaluation Institute, Daniel Waldenström at the Center for Labor Market Studies in the Swedish city of Uppsala.

On the one hand, they once again established what had been known for a long time: many taxpayers are very successful in ensuring that they remain below the income limit and do not have to pay this additional tax.

They do this in four ways.

First, many employees reduce their working hours just enough to avoid paying national taxes.

Apparently this has only become the norm in the last few decades.

An earlier study from the 1990s concluded that employees didn't care about taxes.

Secondly, some self-employed people organize themselves in such a way that their income stays below the limit.

They seem to have better control than employees.

The scale is significantly larger here.

Third: Other self-employed trick the income.

They only pay themselves part of their company's earnings as salary.

They leave the rest in the company or distribute it to themselves as company profits.

Fourth: There are apparently even some employees who are self-employed so that they can better push their income below the tax limit.

Ironically, the clever ones are driven away

Things got interesting when the Swedish researchers combined the tax data with data on the taxpayers' ability to think.

There is compulsory military service in Sweden.

Logical thinking, text comprehension, spatial thinking and technical understanding are also tested during the screening.

The researchers combined all these elements into a value that at least roughly captures what people have in their heads.

Then it became very clear: the smarter the individual Swedes are, the more violently they react to the tax rules - and the more likely they are to work part-time to avoid having to pay the additional taxes.

Whether someone was athletic or not, on the other hand, had practically no influence.

So it is precisely the smartest Swedes who are being driven away from the labor market by taxes.

An overview of the professions shows that doctors, dentists and scientists are at the forefront.

This fits with an older study from Germany that analyzed the effect of tax cuts in the noughties.

At that time it became apparent that people with higher incomes reacted more strongly.

Now one can speculate: maybe the same principle was behind it as in Sweden.

However, all of this affects men in particular.

In Sweden, there is little data from drafting about women, because conscription there was only for men for a long time.

But the researchers also got their school grades from some taxpayers.

It became clear that it was mainly the men with good grades who pushed their income to the tax limit.

The women were therefore completely irrelevant to the tax rates, regardless of their school grades.