The Distribution of Income of Self-employed, Entrepreneurs and Professions as Revealed from Micro Income Tax Statistics in Germany

Merz: The Distribution of Income of Self-employed, Entrepreneurs and Professions

5 Our Data: Income from the German Income Tax Statistic
1992

5.1 General Characteristics and Pros and Cons for the Analysis
of Self-employed and Professions

The German Income Tax Statistic is compulsorily comprising the entire German
population with the most detailed and accurate data with regard to the final (tax)
deductions and the ‘real’ disposable individual income.

The German Income Tax Statistic³ is carried out every three years. The actual data at
hand (1999) is due to the year 1992. This is the first income and tax statistic data for the
re-unified Germany.

The data received by the tax administration from the income tax assessment are
processed by state (Lander) statistical authorities (Statistische Landesamter), then are
revised by the Federal Statistical Office to be published as grouped data according to
different characteristics in a tabled form.

Based on the individual income and tax data the Federal Statistical Office mainly makes
use of the total amount of all forms of income as well the taxable income as a
stratification characteristic in several dimensions. The main part of the respective
published tables follows a subdivision (structure) from the total amount of income
(Gesamtbetrag der Einkünfte, see below) according to 18 quantity classes with
indications by those liable to pay taxes and the respective sum of characteristics in the
quantity class.

Herewith only grouped income data according to these 18 groups are initially available
for further analysis.

It should be stressed for the Income Tax Statistic 1992, that nearly all tables indicate
wages and income tax grouped together and not separated as done in previous years.
The consequences with regard to income delimits from dependent and self-employed
work will be discussed at a later stage.

The pros and cons of the German Income Tax Statistic with regard to our purpose may
be sketched finally by the following.

The major pros comprise:

The Income Tax Statistic is an exhaustive sample and can therefore avoid the problem
of small group (like self-employed and professions) information availability which
normally are attained in microdata sampling.

³ The legal framework for the Income Tax Statistic can be found in the Act on Tax Statistics (Gesetz über die
Steuerstatistiken) of the 6^th of December 1966 (BGB1. I S. 665) with changes of the 19^th of March 1986 (BGB1 I
S. 2555) and in conjunction with the act on the Statistics for Federal Purposes (Gesetz über die Statistik für
Bundeszwecke, Bundesstatistikgesetz) of 22^nd January 1987 (BGB1. I S. 462).

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