Tax treatment of private pension savings in OECD countries

Abstract

Most OECD governments use tax incentives to encourage the development of private retirement saving plans. In many cases, for instance, private pension savings are deductible from the income tax base, and accrued return on investment is exempt from taxation, but pension benefits arising from these savings are taxed. In other cases, accrued return on pension investment is taxed, but at a preferential rate relative to other forms of savings. While several aspects of these arrangements have been studied extensively, there has been little direct cross-country comparison of the ex-ante tax cost of these incentives. The primary purpose of this paper is to provide such comparison by estimating the net tax cost per unit (say, dollar or euro) of contribution to tax-favoured private pension plans, based a present-value methodology.