This paper approximates the efficiency levels of the most relevant tax categories and their distributional patterns for a European country considering Spain as an illustrative example. This is done computing the ‘marginal’ excess burden of these taxes, taking into account the structure of the Spanish tax system before and after the major tax reforms undertaken since 2010. In doing so we use a static applied general equilibrium model, which features heterogeneous households classified according to their taxable income. In addition, and in identical terms, another alternative tax reform is evaluated: a flat value-added tax system and a reduction in employers’ social security contributions. Our results indicate that the alternative tax reform would have slightly improved the degree of efficiency of these taxes while implying a lower negative impact on aggregate income. Regarding distributive effects, we do not find significant differences between the actual and the alternative tax policies.

本文以一个西班牙为例，对欧洲国家最相关的税收类别的效率水平及其分配模式进行了近似估算。这是通过考虑自2010年以来进行的重大税制改革前后西班牙税制的结构来计算这些税种的“边际”超额负担而完成的。在此过程中，我们使用静态的应用一般均衡模型，该模型具有异质性根据应税收入分类的家庭。此外，以相同的方式，评估了另一项替代性税制改革：统一的增值税制度和减少雇主的社会保障缴款。我们的结果表明，替代性税制改革将略微提高这些税种的效率水平，同时暗示对总收入的负面影响较小。关于分配效应，我们发现实际税收政策和替代税收政策之间没有显着差异。