Are the MCVL tax data useful? Ideas for mining

Abstract

This article analyzes the tax data from the Spanish “Continuous Sample of Working life”, which contains an overview for each fiscal year of all income tax withholdings and prepayments on earned income, economic activities and income assignments of salaried workers, pensioners and recipients of unemployment benefits. To that end, we present the characteristics of these data; we provide a detailed statistical description for the years 2004-2009, linked to information from personal files and those of contributors to the Spanish social security system; and we highlight the opportunities for analysis of some issues related to the labour market and income distribution.