This new paper by André Decoster, Koen Dedobbeleer and Sebastiaan Maes documents the evolution of top income inequality in Belgium using tax tabulations and national accounts data. Their results show that inferring evolutions of the income share of the top 10% or 1% from published tables of net taxable income is highly misleading. After correction, there is little evidence that top income shares in Belgium have increased during the last 25 years. In contrast to similar analyses for the UK, US, Germany, and to a lesser extent France and the Netherlands, they do not find a clear increase in the income share of the top decile or the top percentile.
Top 1% income share: Belgium vs. other developed countries
