{"title":"Redesigning the EITC: Issues in Design, Eligibility, Delivery, and Administration","authors":"Elaine M. Maag, D. Marron, E. Huffer","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3498856","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3498856","url":null,"abstract":"The earned income tax credit provides substantial assistance to low- and moderate-income workers. Benefits tilt heavily to families with children. Prompted in part by the success of the credit and in part by shortcomings in the credit, policymakers, advocates, and analysts have offered up reform proposals. In this report, we describe the credit’s current effects and then analyze the credit’s basic elements (its eligibility requirements, design, timing, administration, and effects on other programs including State EITCs and transfer programs) to help guide thinking on these potential reforms.","PeriodicalId":420615,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Personal Income & Other Non-Business Taxes & Subsidies (Topic)","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127738750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Canadian Income Taxation: Statistical Analysis and Parametric Estimates","authors":"Musab Kurnaz, Terry A. Yip","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3386443","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3386443","url":null,"abstract":"Using the administrative tax return database from Canada, we report facts on the distribution of tax liabilities and the variation of average tax rates by family size and marital status and compare them with those of the US. We estimate parametric tax functions used in applied macroeconomic and public finance studies. Although these functions are good fits to the data, their residuals are significantly high at top income levels. We introduce a new parametric tax function which captures the top rates better compared to existing tax functions. The new specification can provide better quantitative analysis for studies on heterogeneous households.","PeriodicalId":420615,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Personal Income & Other Non-Business Taxes & Subsidies (Topic)","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124780133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'Will You Marry Me...In December?' -- Tax-Induced Wedding Date Shifting and Mismatching in Long-Term Relationships","authors":"Kerstin Roeder, R. Ullmann","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3354630","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3354630","url":null,"abstract":"We use administrative micro-level data of all 1,799,066 divorce cases in Germany over the 2006 to 2015 period to empirically show that marriages with weddings at year end last considerably shorter than does the average (median) marriage. Specifically the average (median) difference (conditional on divorce) between marriages with December weddings and marriages with weddings in all remaining months is 500.4 (654) days with overall length of marriage being 5223.6 (4498) days. We attribute this empirical observation to the German marriage tax benefit which is granted for the entire calendar year if the couple is married for at least one day therein. In response to this incentive, couples use forward shifting of the ’legal’ wedding date as a tax planning strategy to collect the marriage tax benefit for the year(s) prior to their ’real’ (i.e. in the absence of any tax benefit) date of the wedding. We theoretically model this decision and argue that, in essence, couples forego sufficient courtship time to collect the marriage tax benefit, and hence, mismatching in long-term relationships results.","PeriodicalId":420615,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Personal Income & Other Non-Business Taxes & Subsidies (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129358821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sociologic Factors and Social Structure in Preparation of Tax Acts and the Assessment of Personal Income Tax in Terms of Suitability to Social Structure","authors":"Ahmet Ak","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3471902","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3471902","url":null,"abstract":"Social state law has a need to regular fiscal source to maintain its sovereignty and to fulfill the duties the Constitution levies. Fort his reason, use of taxation power is a political obligation. The regulations related to tax concerns the whole society. Tax acts has a lot of features not included in other many acts. The most important one of these is that tax acts have to show a suitable change to the economic life altering constantly. In every society, if the rules found or created are not suitable to expectations, necessities and conditions of a society in a specified time period, the society makes them out of order eventually whatever compeller power of them is inflexible and decisive. While acts are prepared, it is compulsory to determine the real needs by observing the society studiously. Because tax acts have to be especially suitable to the fundamentals of moral and personal interest. In legislating, changing or annulment of tax acts, it has to be cared social structure, market conditions, and suitability to menatlity and beliefs of the society rather than concrete or abstract reasons. Otherwise, even force or sanctions becomes insufficient in obeying the law. In this study, it is aimed to search what sociologic factors are in legislation of acts and suitability of tax acts to social structure as is in other acts and to reveal tax acts by considering the regulations related to Turkish Personal Income Tax Act and literature review method is used as research method","PeriodicalId":420615,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Personal Income & Other Non-Business Taxes & Subsidies (Topic)","volume":"46 10","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120922871","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tax Benefit Complexity and Take-Up: Lessons from the Earned Income Tax Credit","authors":"Jacob Goldin","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3101160","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3101160","url":null,"abstract":"Millions of low-income Americans fail to claim tax benefits for which they are eligible, possibly because the rules governing the benefits are extraordinarily complex. I consider efforts to increase tax benefit take-up in light of this complexity. A key fact is that the vast majority of tax filers today prepare their taxes with assisted preparation methods (APMs) like software or professional assistance. APMs eliminate some – but not all – of the barriers to claiming tax benefits for which one is eligible. With respect to claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), I argue that most of the relevant complexity is the type that is eliminated by APMs. Consequently, efforts to increase EITC take-up should focus on inducing EITC-eligible individuals to file a tax return using an APM. In contrast, efforts aimed at increasing awareness of the credit (of the type widely employed by governments and nonprofits today) are less likely to be successful, except to the extent they themselves induce an increase in tax filing. Reforms that appear unrelated to a tax benefit may dramatically affect the benefit’s take-up by altering incentives to file a return. I develop these arguments in the context of the EITC, drawing on recent empirical work to support my claims.","PeriodicalId":420615,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Personal Income & Other Non-Business Taxes & Subsidies (Topic)","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125631530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Income Tax Withholding and Reference-Dependence: Experimental Evidence on the Role of Salience","authors":"S. Allen","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3161000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3161000","url":null,"abstract":"It is recognised in the existing economic literature that income tax withholding arrangements, near-universally adopted in higher-income economies, reduce the salience (or visibility) of tax payments, compared with self-reporting arrangements in which individuals file a tax return directly. However, traditional economic models, and existing reference-dependent preference models, fail to account for this effect. This paper exploits an individual’s labour choice decision to model this phenomenon via reference-dependent preferences, varying the reference point across the respective systems. Withholding is framed as a gain in net income, whereas self-reporting is framed as a loss against gross income. A survey experiment, adapting a design by Abeler et al. (Am Econ Rev, 101(2): 470-492, 2011), is then utilised, in which subjects choose between rewards framed as above, to examine the existence of this effect. For the same net reward, subjects state a higher mean effort under self-reporting, and effort appears to cluster according to the predicted use of reference-dependent preferences. Thus salience appears to play a significant role in labour responses to tax remittance methods.","PeriodicalId":420615,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Personal Income & Other Non-Business Taxes & Subsidies (Topic)","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121168138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Do Taxes Increase Economic Inequality? A Comparative Study Based on the State Personal Income Tax","authors":"Ugo Troiano","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3092770","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3092770","url":null,"abstract":"I present new quasi-experimental evidence on the relationship between tax policies and the distribution of income. I focus on the twentieth century United States, and on the personal income tax, since its inception. I study three major policy events that, as the existing literature shows, significantly raised the revenues from the income tax: the introduction of the state personal income tax, the introduction of tax withholding together with third-party reporting, and the intergovernmental agreements between the federal and state governments to coordinate tax auditing efforts. All the three policies were introduced in a staggered fashion and increased tax revenues, but had different fiscal consequences. Despite this, I find that income inequality raised after all the tax policy events. The result is robust to different measures of economic inequality and econometric specifications.","PeriodicalId":420615,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Personal Income & Other Non-Business Taxes & Subsidies (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126282498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
O. Bover, J. Casado, Esteban García-Miralles, J. Maria Labeaga Azcona, Roberto Ramos Magdaleno
{"title":"Microsimulation Tools for the Evaluation of Fiscal Policy Reforms at the Banco De España","authors":"O. Bover, J. Casado, Esteban García-Miralles, J. Maria Labeaga Azcona, Roberto Ramos Magdaleno","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3048727","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3048727","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents the microsimulation models developed at the Banco de Espana for the study of fiscal reforms, describing the tool used to evaluate changes in the Spanish personal income tax and also the one for the value added tax and excise duties. In both cases the structure, data and output of the model are detailed and its capabilities are illustrated using simple examples of hypothetical tax reforms, presented only to illustrate the use of these simulation tools.","PeriodicalId":420615,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Personal Income & Other Non-Business Taxes & Subsidies (Topic)","volume":"102 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115162327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jason Debacker, B. Heim, Shanthi P. Ramnath, J. Ross
{"title":"The Impact of State Taxes on Pass-Through Businesses: Evidence from the 2012 Kansas Income Tax Reform","authors":"Jason Debacker, B. Heim, Shanthi P. Ramnath, J. Ross","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2958353","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2958353","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In 2012, Kansas undertook a large-scale tax reform that excluded pass-through business income from individual taxation. In theory, these changes enhance the incentives to undertake more real economic activity, such as new business formation or expansion of existing businesses. The reform also increased the incentive to avoid taxation by recharacterizing income sources. This paper provides evidence of these effects using federal administrative income tax data spanning 2010–2014. Several findings suggest that, on both the extensive and intensive margins, the pass-through exclusion led to increased tax avoidance in the form of income recharacterization and shifting of effort from activities compensated through wages to those compensated with business income. We do not find much evidence, however, that the Kansas reform led to increases in real economic activity.","PeriodicalId":420615,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Personal Income & Other Non-Business Taxes & Subsidies (Topic)","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126815986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sumit Agarwal, S. Chomsisengphet, Pulak Ghosh, Tianyue Ruan, Man Zhang
{"title":"Consumption and Saving Response to a Tax-Subsidized Saving Policy: Evidence from India","authors":"Sumit Agarwal, S. Chomsisengphet, Pulak Ghosh, Tianyue Ruan, Man Zhang","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3020062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3020062","url":null,"abstract":"To incentivize households to increase private savings, the Indian government implemented in July 2014 a new tax-subsidized saving policy that largely incentivizes homeowners by allowing them to exempt an additional 50,000 INR ($833) of the mortgage principal and interest payments from taxable income. We exploit the exogeneous policy change and assess the extent to which households reduce their consumption in order to finance a tax-favored saving instrument using a unique administrative panel data of consumer debit card and credit card spending transactions. We find that about 31% of households with a mortgage increase the principal repayment amount after the policy change; the median annual increase in principal repayment is about US$307, which is about 36.8% of the higher tax exemption limit. We estimate that households with a mortgage reduce their consumption by US$25 (5.2%) per month on average in order to finance the tax-favored saving account. For a one dollar increase in the income tax exemption limit on long-term savings, private saving increases by $0.23 for the treatment group. Relative to annual income, private savings for the treatment group increase by about 1.87% on average.","PeriodicalId":420615,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Personal Income & Other Non-Business Taxes & Subsidies (Topic)","volume":"90 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128321046","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}