Taxation of public pensions in European Union countries

The aging of society is one of the most important trends shaping the social, economic and political life of the 21st century. However, with the increasing number of people of retirement age, the problem of ensuring adequate conditions for a longer life arises. The state influences these conditions through the pension security system, including taxation of pensions. The paper attempts to answer the question whether taxation of remunerations and public pension benefits may have a significant impact on making decisions about choosing a country of work in the common market. For this purpose, Member States have been ranked in terms of two dimensions—the conditions of taxation of wages and the conditions of taxation of retirement benefits. The countries were classified using a multi-criteria comparative analysis and the agglomeration method. The study shows that taxing salaries and pension benefits is of marginal importance from the point of view of an employee’s decision-making. The main factors are the average expenditure on net salaries and the average expenditure on net pension benefits.