Hoofdbelasting

Hoofdbelasting is a term used in Dutch fiscal analysis to describe the tax burden attributed to an individual per person, or per capita. It is a concept often employed in policy discussions and distributional studies to compare how burdens of government revenue collection fall on different people or groups within a society.

The idea behind hoofdbelasting is to translate the various taxes and mandatory contributions that governments collect into a single per-person measure. In practice, different studies may allocate taxes and social contributions in different ways, using microsimulation models or distributional analyses. A hoofdbelasting can be expressed as gross (before transfers and benefits) or net (after cash benefits and subsidies) to reflect the impact on an individual’s resources.

Taxes typically included in hoofdbelasting analyses are income tax, payroll and social security contributions, property taxes, and, in some approaches, a share of indirect taxes such as value-added tax allocated to individuals based on average consumption patterns. Because indirect taxes are paid by households through consumption, their allocation is method-dependent and can influence the resulting per-person burden.

The concept is used to assess tax fairness and the progressivity of the tax system, to compare fiscal pressure across income groups, and to support cross-country comparisons of tax burdens. Limitations arise from methodological choices, such as how indirect taxes are allocated, how transfers are accounted for, and data availability, which can lead to different hoofdbelasting figures for the same population.