ABSTRACT
In Denmark, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States income shares of both the bottom 60% and the middle strata have remained virtually unchanged. With few exceptions, all countries demonstrate an overall decline in the top 5 and 10% income shares, although initial levels and patterns of change vary. To assess income inequality from a comparative and historical perspective, economists must ask how these two fundamental aspects of economic inequality differ from each other, how they vary between countries, and how they have changed over time. The modern European income tax systems developed historically from two types: scheduled taxes and lump-sum taxes. The scheduled income tax is a set of taxes on different types of income that are not added to form a person's total income. The lump-sum income tax, on the other hand, levies taxes on an individual's income, so that data on both the number of income -units and the amount of total taxable income are recorded.
