The contribution of tax statistics for analysing regional income disparities in Italy

This paper provides new insights on the study of regional income disparities in Italy by using administrative microdata on individual tax returns. The main results of the paper can be listed as follows. It is documented that inequality in this country is important when looking at the distribution of income both between and within regions. High inequality levels are recorded particularly when comparing the distribution of income of women and young people across regions. From the decomposition of the redistributive effects of the Italian personal income tax, we find that tax credits act for redistribution mostly in the South and tax schedules in the Centre North. The strengths and weaknesses of using tax files for analysing regional income disparities are also discussed