The payroll tax exemption in Brazil: Structural and quasi-experimental perspectives^*

Abstract

This paper estimates the payroll tax exemption effects by two alternative approaches. First, a Quasi-experiment which takes into account the fact that firms under the tax regime called Simples already do not pay payroll taxes to define such group of firms as control. The other approach was a structural model which considers payroll tax as a source of market imperfection, whose effects can be estimated from production function coefficients. Results suggest that Quasi-Experimental methodology overestimated policy effects and the conclusion is that this policy had reduced effects.

Keywords
policy evaluation; payroll tax exemption; quasi-experiment; structural models