The Taxable Income Elasticity of High-Income Taxpayers: Evidence from a Long Panel

Abstract

This paper employs a long panel of income tax returns to examine trends in reported by the wealthy taxpayers over a number of tax reforms spanning the years 1979 through 1995. During this period, a number of tax reforms were enacted, including the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, the Tax Reform Act of 1986, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, and the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. This paper focuses on how the top one percent of the tax filing population responded to changes in income tax rates in these reforms.