Volatile Top Income Shares in Switzerland? Reassessing the Evolution Between 1981 and 2010

Abstract

In the last 20 years, the share of top incomes in Switzerland has risen, while exhibiting large variations. Switzerland is similar to European countries for the top1% but closer to the U.S. for higher top income groups. With the synthetic control method, we close a time gap in the tax data, exploiting the fact that Swiss cantons changed their tax system at different points in time. Using social security data which cover all top labor incomes, we document the growing importance of labor compared to capital incomes among top income earners in Switzerland.