This volume looks at how tax and benefit systems may discourage individuals to seek employment and firms to hire workers. An examination of potential tax and benefit reforms and a survey of changes in OECD countries designed to improve incentives suggest a series of recommendations to policy-makers.

Employer's Tax Guide (Circular E) - The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), enacted on March 18, 2020, and amended by the COVID-related Tax Relief Act of 2020, provides certain employers with tax credits that reimburse them for the cost of providing paid sick and family leave wages to their employees for leave related to COVID‐19. Qualified sick and family leave wages and the related credits for qualified sick and family leave wages are only reported on employment tax returns with respect to wages paid for leave taken in quarters beginning after March 31, 2020, and before April 1, 2021, unless extended by future legislation. If you paid qualified sick and family leave wages in 2021 for 2020 leave, you will claim the credit on your 2021 employment tax return. Under the FFCRA, certain employers with fewer than 500 employees provide paid sick and fam-ily leave to employees unable to work or telework. The FFCRA required such employers to provide leave to such employees after March 31, 2020, and before January 1, 2021. Publication 15 (For use in 2021)

The paper analyzes the wage-employment effects of replacing unemployment benefits by negative income taxes. It first surveys the major equity and efficiency effects of unemployment benefits versus negative income taxes, and summarizes the salient features of many European unemployment benefit systems in this light. Second, it presents a simple theoretical model that focuses on the relative wage-employment effects of unemployment benefits versus negative income taxes. Finally, it provides some empirical groundwork for assessing this relative effect