Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/243465 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Policy Paper No. 179
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We use population-wide tax register data to document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on firm sales, tax revenues, and sick pay in Sweden. The pandemic impact is identified using within-year, between-year, and geographical variation, and our data allows us to run placebo tests. Our findings confirm the large negative effects of the pandemic, but shed new light on their magnitudes and sensitivity to COVID-19 morbidity rates. Specifically, we find that the impact on VAT and firm sales was larger than on commonly used industrial and service production indexes, larger than the effect on electricity for industrial use, but less than the effect on excise taxes on air travel. The pandemic's impact on short-term sick pay is large, but unlike tax payments, it does not vary with local infection rates, indicating behavioral responses to more generous rules for sickness insurance during the pandemic.
Subjects: 
COVID-19
VAT
excise taxes
sick pay
JEL: 
H24
H25
J22
J24
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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