Luisa Wallossek

• Benzarti, Youssef & Wallossek, Luisa (2024). Rising Income Tax Complexity. National tax journal. ISSN 0028-0283. 77(1), p. 143–173. doi: 10.1086/728586. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This paper provides novel estimates on the cost of filing taxes over time and in different countries. First, we ran a survey of US taxpayers. We find that taxpayers perceive that tax complexity and filing costs have been increasing and that the majority would be willing to pay for simplifying the tax system and adopting prepopulated tax returns. Second, we use word counts of the tax codes in several countries dating as far back as the early 1980s as a proxy for tax-compliance costs. This measure shows that compliance costs have been steadily increasing.

• Hauck, Tobias & Wallossek, Luisa (2024). Optional (non-)filing and effective taxation. Journal of Public Economics. ISSN 0047-2727. 238, p. 105187–105187. doi: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105187. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Many countries have automatic wage tax withholding systems with tax non-filing options for some taxpayers. We show that this has sizable and potentially unintended implications for effective taxation because taxes are often over-withheld. Low-income taxpayers pay more taxes than they have to because they frequently do not file. Using German administrative tax data, we document that the average non-filer overpays € 119 in one year, equivalent to a 1.2 percentage point increase in the average tax rate. Non-filing acts as a form of “reverse evasion”: It weakens the effective tax progressivity by increasing tax rates at the bottom of the income distribution.

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• Wallossek, Luisa (2026). Lost in Deduction: Taxpayers' Mistakes when Itemizing. Full text in Research Archive
• Wallossek, Luisa (2026). Lost in Deduction: Taxpayers' Mistakes when Itemizing. Full text in Research Archive
• Wallossek, Luisa (2026). Lost in Deduction: Taxpayers' Mistakes when Itemizing. Full text in Research Archive
• Wallossek, Luisa (2025). Lost in Deduction: Taxpayers' Mistakes when Itemizing. Full text in Research Archive
• Mommaerts, Corina; Andresen, Martin Eckhoff; Kostøl, Andreas Ravndal; Milton, Ross T. & Wallossek, Luisa (2025). Monthly Earnings Volatility and Household Pooling. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This paper examines monthly earnings volatility and its transmission to household earnings volatility using data from Norway on the universe of monthly employment and pay histories linked to household members. In the first part of the paper, we document substantial month-to-month changes in earnings: within a job, while a quarter of months have no earnings changes, another quarter have at least a 23\% change in earnings. Accounting for multiple-job holdings and spells of non-employment increases volatility, while further aggregating from the individual to the household level reduces volatility by 19-30\%. In the second part of the paper, we explore the roles of spousal insurance, assortative matching, and income pooling through event study analyses of job loss and couple formation as well as decomposition and bounding exercises. We show that virtually all of the decrease in volatility at the household level can be attributed to earnings pooling rather than to who marries whom or to behavioral responses to shocks.

• Mommaerts, Corina; Andresen, Martin Eckhoff; Kostøl, Andreas Ravndal; Milton, Ross T. & Wallossek, Luisa (2025). Monthly Earnings Volatility and Household Pooling. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This paper examines monthly earnings volatility and its transmission to household earnings volatility using data from Norway on the universe of monthly employment and pay histories linked to household members. In the first part of the paper, we document substantial month-to-month changes in earnings: within a job, while a quarter of months have no earnings changes, another quarter have at least a 23\% change in earnings. Accounting for multiple-job holdings and spells of non-employment increases volatility, while further aggregating from the individual to the household level reduces volatility by 19-30\%. In the second part of the paper, we explore the roles of spousal insurance, assortative matching, and income pooling through event study analyses of job loss and couple formation as well as decomposition and bounding exercises. We show that virtually all of the decrease in volatility at the household level can be attributed to earnings pooling rather than to who marries whom or to behavioral responses to shocks.

• Wallossek, Luisa (2024). Withholding taxes. Full text in Research Archive
• Bucher-Koenen, Tabea; Wallossek, Luisa & Winter, Joachim (2026). Opt-in or Opt-out? The Power of Defaults in Pension Enrollment Choices. CESifo network. doi: 10.65864/lhwgnu4zpv. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Default settings strongly increase pension enrollment, especially when savings incentives are high and choices are complex. We show that the effect is weaker when incentives are low, options are simple, and opting out is easy. We study the nationwide introduction of auto-enrollment for low-income employees in Germany's public pay-as-you-go pension system. We find that automatic enrollment raises participation by 23 percentage points, though most individuals actively opt out. Linking administrative and survey data shows that the default effect is stronger when enrollment incentives are higher and among individuals who lack knowledge of their enrollment status.

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