Administrative Tax Data Research Articles

Earnings Shocks and Stabilization During COVID-19

<ns3:p>This paper documents the magnitude and distribution of U.S. earnings changes during the COVID-19 pandemic and how fiscal relief offset lost earnings. We build panels from administrative tax data to measure annual earnings changes. The frequency of earnings declines during the pandemic were similar to the Great Recession, but the distribution was very different. In 2020, workers starting in the bottom half of the distribution were more likely to experience large annual earnings declines and a similar share of male and female workers had large earnings declines. While most workers experiencing large annual earnings declines do not receive unemployment insurance, over half of beneficiaries were made whole in 2020, as unemployment insurance replaced a median of 103 percent of their annual earnings declines. After incorporating unemployment insurance, the likelihood of large earnings declines among low-earning workers was not only smaller than during the Great Recession, but also smaller than in 2019.</ns3:p>

Distributional National Accounts (DINA) with Household Survey Data: Methodology and Results for European Countries

This paper builds Distributional National Accounts (DINA) using household survey data. We develop a transparent and reproducible methodology that uses only publicly available sources, provides highly comparable results well suited for policy analyses, and can be applied when administrative tax data are not available for research. We apply this methodology to build synthetic micro‐datafiles for European countries that cover the entire distribution, include all income components separately, are consistent with national accounts, and preserve the detailed socioeconomic information available in the surveys. We discuss the methodological steps and their impact on the income distribution. In particular, we highlight the effects of imputations and the adjustment of variables to national accounts’ totals. Furthermore, we compare the different income concepts of the DINA and the EG‐DNA approach in a consistent way. Overall, aligning household incomes with national accounts’ totals and imputing incomes from other sectors increases inequality in most countries, which underlines the importance of reconciling income distributions with macroeconomic aggregates.

Notching R&D Investment with Corporate Income Tax Cuts in China

We study a Chinese policy that awards substantial tax cuts to firms with R&D investment over a threshold or “notch.” Quasi-experimental variation and administrative tax data show a significant increase in reported R&D that is partly driven by firms relabeling expenses as R&D. Structural estimates show relabeling accounts for 24.2 percent of reported R&D and that doubling R&D would increase productivity by 9 percent. Policy simulations show that firm selection and relabeling determine the cost-effectiveness of stimulating R&D, that notch-based policies are more effective than tax credits when relabeling is prevalent, and that modest spillovers justify the program from a welfare perspective. (JEL D22, D24, H25, O14, O32, P31, P35)

Who does and doesn't pay taxes?

AbstractWe use administrative tax data from audits of self‐assessment tax returns to understand what types individuals are most likely to be non‐compliant. Non‐compliance is common, with one‐third of taxpayers underpaying by some amount, although half of aggregate under‐reporting is done by just 2 per cent of taxpayers. Third‐party reporting reduces non‐compliance, while working in a cash‐prevalent industry increases it. However, compliance also varies significantly with individual characteristics: non‐compliance is higher for men and younger people. These results matter for measuring inequality, for understanding taxpayer behaviour, and for targeting audit resources.

The Structure of Business Taxation in China

This paper documents facts about the structure of business taxation in China using administrative tax data from 2007 to 2011 from the State Taxation Administration. We first document the importance of different business taxes across industries. Although corporate income taxes play an important role for manufacturing firms, these firms also remit a large share of their tax payments through the value-added tax system, through the excise tax system, and through payroll taxes. Gross receipts taxes play an important role for firms in other industries, leading to spillovers that may affect the overall economy. Second, we evaluate whether the structure of China’s tax revenue matches its stage of development. A cross-country comparison of sources of government revenue shows that China collects a high share of tax revenue from taxes on goods and services and a high share of income tax on corporations. Finally, we study whether firm-level differences in effective tax rates can be an important source of allocative inefficiencies. Decomposing the variation in effective tax rates across firms, we find that government policies, including loss carry-forward provisions and preferential policies for regional, foreign, small, and high-tech firms, have significant explanatory power. Nonetheless, although effective tax rates vary along a number of dimensions, tax policy does not explain the large dispersion in the returns to factors of production across firms.

The Importance of Qualitative Research Approaches to Gig Economy Taxation

As the United States tax system continues to grapple with how to tax workers in the gig economy, it confronts a number of questions about the nature and composition of the sector as well as the tax issues confronted by its participants. Many of these questions have proven difficult to answer due to a lack of adequate information. But the answers are important and will shape how tax and other areas of law (such as employment law, labor law, and antitrust) respond to the gig economy. Thus, the question of how to obtain the data and information necessary to formulate sound policies for gig work is vital. This chapter discusses the limitations of quantitative empirical research on the gig economy and argues that incorporating more qualitative approaches will help generate a more comprehensive understanding of the tax policy issues involved. Adoption of a diverse set of research approaches is crucial because the administrative tax return and labor survey data are incomplete and are shaped by prior decisions of gig economy firms and participants. Many questions remain that such quantitative data, by its very nature, cannot answer. This chapter first identifies the key tax issues at stake in the gig economy, including tax administration, worker classification, and tax impacts on workforce decisions. It then discusses the key ways in which quantitative approaches do not fully capture the tax issues at stake. Finally, it details how qualitative research methods such as interviews and case studies can flesh out gaps in the quantitative data, can help interpret quantitative data, and can help answer questions that extend beyond the scope of quantitative data, yielding a richer account of gig economy tax issues than that provided by quantitative tax administrative and labor survey data alone.

Understanding the elasticity of taxable income: A tale of two approaches

This paper conducts the first formal comparison of two main approaches (tax reform versus bunching approach) to estimate the elasticity of taxable income (ETI), a central parameter in the public finance literature since Feldstein (1999). Using a novel panel of administrative tax data from China and exploiting China’s progressive monthly wage income tax schedule and a tax reform in 2011, we document two key differences in the ETI estimates obtained from these two approaches. First, the tax reform ETI estimates increase concavely over time, while the bunching ETI estimates are much more stable. Second, the tax reform ETI estimates (around 4 in the long-run) are much larger than the bunching ETI (around 0.5), and the difference is statistically significant. To account for these facts, we develop a simple model where individuals in each period have some probability to permanently change hours of work without paying other costs but can temporarily adjust hours by paying additional costs. With stable wage rates, the two estimators should converge to the same underlying value. But with normal wage growth, the tax reform estimates converge to the true underlying parameter, whereas the bunching estimates can be far below the true figure.

The corporate income tax gap in South Africa: a top-down approach

A key objective of many governments is to improve tax revenue mobilization. One way to achieve this is by improving tax compliance. This requires accurate knowledge of the tax gap, i.e., the difference between what should be paid and what is actually paid. Tax gaps have been primarily estimated in developed countries, and very little is known about tax gaps in developing countries. Information about these gaps can help policy makers develop appropriate revenue mobilization strategies. This paper uses a top-down approach to estimate the tax gap in corporate income tax in South Africa. It uses national accounts statistics and tax administrative data to estimate the gap in the non-financial corporate sector, i.e., the difference between potential and actual corporate income tax under current tax legislation. The overall gap is estimated at 39 per cent of the potential tax liability or 2 per cent of GDP over the period 2015 to 2017.

The Anti-Poverty, Targeting, and Labor Supply Effects of the Proposed Child Tax Credit Expansion

The proposed change under the American Families Plan (AFP) to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) Child Tax Credit (CTC) would increase maximum benefit amounts to $3,000 or $3,600 per child (up from $2,000 per child) and make the full credit available to all low and middle-income families regardless of earnings or income. We estimate the anti-poverty, targeting, and labor supply effects of the expansion by linking survey data with administrative tax and government program data which form part of the Comprehensive Income Dataset (CID). Initially ignoring any behavioral responses, we estimate that the expansion of the CTC would reduce child poverty by 34% and deep child poverty by 39%. The expansion of the CTC would have a larger anti-poverty effect on children than any existing government program, though at a higher cost per child raised above the poverty line than any other means-tested program. Relatedly, the CTC expansion would allocate a smaller share of its total dollars to families at the bottom of the income distribution—as well as families with the lowest levels of long-term income, education, or health—than any existing means-tested program with the exception of housing assistance. We then simulate anti-poverty effects accounting for labor supply responses. By replacing the TCJA CTC (which contained substantial work incentives akin to the EITC) with a universal basic income-type benefit, the CTC expansion reduces the return to working at all by at least $2,000 per child for most workers with children. Relying on elasticity estimates consistent with mainstream simulation models and the academic literature, we estimate that this change in policy would lead 1.5 million workers (constituting 2.6% of all working parents) to exit the labor force. The decline in employment and the consequent earnings loss would mean that child poverty would only fall by 22% and deep child poverty would not fall at all with the CTC expansion.

The Anti-Poverty, Targeting, and Labor Supply Effects of Replacing a Child Tax Credit with a Child Allowance

The proposed change under the American Families Plan (AFP) to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) Child Tax Credit (CTC) would increase maximum benefit amounts to $3,000 or $3,600 per child (up from $2,000 per child) and make the full credit available to all low and middle-income families regardless of earnings or income. We estimate the anti-poverty, targeting, and labor supply effects of the expansion by linking survey data with administrative tax and government program data which form part of the Comprehensive Income Dataset (CID). Initially ignoring any behavioral responses, we estimate that the expansion of the CTC would reduce child poverty by 34% and deep child poverty by 39%. The expansion of the CTC would have a larger anti-poverty effect on children than any existing government program, though at a higher cost per child raised above the poverty line than any other means-tested program. Relatedly, the CTC expansion would allocate a smaller share of its total dollars to families at the bottom of the income distribution—as well as families with the lowest levels of long-term income, education, or health—than any existing means-tested program with the exception of housing assistance. We then simulate anti-poverty effects accounting for labor supply responses. By replacing the TCJA CTC (which contained substantial work incentives akin to the Earned Income Tax Credit) with a universal basic income-type benefit, the CTC expansion reduces the return to working at all by at least $2,000 per child for most workers with children. Relying on elasticity estimates consistent with mainstream simulation models and the academic literature, we estimate that this change in policy would lead 1.5 million workers (constituting 2.6% of all working parents) to exit the labor force. The decline in employment and the consequent earnings loss would mean that child poverty would only fall by 22% and deep child poverty would not fall at all with the CTC expansion.

Top Wealth in America: New Estimates and Implications for Taxing the Rich

This paper uses administrative tax data to estimate top wealth in the United States. We assemble new data that links people to their sources of capital income and develop new methods to estimate the degree of return heterogeneity within asset classes. Disaggregated fixed income data reveal that rich individuals earn much more of their interest income in higher-yielding forms, and have much greater exposure to credit risk. Consequently, in recent years, the interest rate on fixed income at the top is approximately three times higher than the average. Using firm-level characteristics to value firms, we find that twenty percent of total pass-through business wealth accrues to those with losses. We combine this new data on fixed income and pass-through business returns with refined estimates of C-corporation equity, housing, and pension wealth to deliver new capitalized wealth estimates. Our approach---which builds on Saez and Zucman (2016) and Bricker, Henriques, and Hansen (2018)---reduces bias because wealth and rates of return are correlated. From 1989 to 2016, the top 1%, 0.1%, and 0.01% wealth shares increased by 7.6, 5.1, and 3.0 percentage points, respectively, to 31.5%, 15.0%, and 7.0%. While these changes are less dramatic than some prior estimates, wealth is very concentrated: the top 1% holds nearly as much wealth as either the bottom 90% or the P90-99 class. We discuss implications for income inequality measures, capital tax policy, and savings behavior. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Inducing Labor: the Impact of Health Insurance on Post-Natal Labor Supply

In this paper we analyze the role of access to health insurance plays in the widely documented, sharp fall in mother's labor supply following childbirth. Our analysis exploits variation created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which substantially expanded access to health insurance within the U.S., and richly detailed administrative tax data. We find that mother's relative post-childbirth employment increases by 12\% for births that occur after the insurance expansion. This labor supply response is pervasive across mother's pre-birth characteristics, and across the varied impact of the ACA expansion. Our analysis suggests that this response is likely driven by a combination of improved access to maternal health care, increased participation by mothers who do not work before birth, reduced exits among mothers who do work before birth, and a compositional changes in who gives birth following the ACA health insurance expansion.

Top Wealth in America: New Estimates and Implications for Taxing the Rich

This paper uses administrative tax data to estimate top wealth in the United States. We assemble new data that links people to their sources of capital income and develop new methods to estimate the degree of return heterogeneity within asset classes. Disaggregated fixed income data reveal that rich individuals earn much more of their interest income in higher-yielding forms, and have much greater exposure to credit risk. Consequently, in recent years, the interest rate on fixed income at the top is approximately three times higher than the average. Using firm-level characteristics to value firms, we find that twenty percent of total pass-through business wealth accrues to those with losses. We combine this new data on fixed income and pass-through business returns with refined estimates of C-corporation equity, housing, and pension wealth to deliver new capitalized wealth estimates. Our approach---which builds on Saez and Zucman (2016) and Bricker, Henriques, and Hansen (2018)---reduces bias because wealth and rates of return are correlated. From 1989 to 2016, the top 1%, 0.1%, and 0.01% wealth shares increased by 7.6, 5.1, and 3.0 percentage points, respectively, to 31.5%, 15.0%, and 7.0%. While these changes are less dramatic than some prior estimates, wealth is very concentrated: the top 1% holds nearly as much wealth as either the bottom 90% or the P90-99 class. We discuss implications for income inequality measures, capital tax policy, and savings behavior.

Match Bias or Nonignorable Nonresponse? Improved Imputation and Administrative Data In the CPS Asec

Abstract We test an improved imputation technique, sequential regression multivariate imputation (SRMI), for the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement to address match bias. Furthermore, we augment the model with administrative tax data to test for nonignorable nonresponse. Using data from 2009, 2011, and 2013, we find that the current hot deck imputation used by the Census Bureau produces different distribution statistics, downward for poverty and inequality and upward for median income, relative to the SRMI model-based estimates. Our results suggest that these differences are a result of match bias, not nonignorable nonresponse. Nearly all poverty, median income, and inequality estimates are not significantly different when comparing imputation models with and without administrative data. However, there are clear efficiency gains from using administrative data.

The response of small firms to VAT thresholds: evidence from China

ABSTRACT This paper explores the response of small-scale value-added tax (VAT) taxpayers to the changes of VAT thresholds and VAT tax rates. Using firm-level tax administrative data for the period between 2005 and 2012, we find that firms tend to bunch around the VAT thresholds. We also find that commercial firms and firms with higher value-added ratios are less likely to register as general taxpayers. We provide an estimate of the elasticity of the VAT tax base in the range of 0.027 and 0.05.

The $100 Million Nudge: Increasing Tax Compliance of Businesses and the Self-Employed Using a Natural Field Experiment

This paper uses a natural field experiment to examine the effectiveness of specific nudges on tax compliance amongst firms and the self-employed in the Dominican Republic. In collaboration with the Dominican Republic’s tax authority, we designed messages for more than 28,000 self-employed workers and over 56,000 firms. Leveraging administrative tax data, we find evidence that our nudges (increasing the salience of prison sentences or public disclosure of tax evaders) have large effects on increasing tax compliance, primarily working through the channel of decreasing claimed tax exemptions. Interestingly, we find that firms are more impacted than the self-employed, and that firm size is critically linked to nudge effectiveness: larger firms are considerably more influenced by nudges than smaller firms. We find this latter result noteworthy given the paucity of evidence showing significant behavioral impacts of nudges amongst the largest players in a market. Overall, our messages increased tax revenue by $193 million (roughly 0.23% of the Dominican Republic’s GDP in 2018), with over $100 million constituting income that the government would not have received without our field experimental nudges. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

BEHAVIORAL REACTION TO THE 2008 INCOME TAX REFORM IN INDONESIA: A BUNCHING ANALYSIS

Income tax reforms generally constitute some changes in marginal tax rates and its income thresholds which often lead to a higher tax liability. Taxpayers may respond to these changes differently, mainly by trying to lower their tax payments. Self-employed individuals have a greater incentive to strategically adjust to a lower income declaration. Using administrative tax data, this paper examines the reaction of self-employed taxpayers to the 2008 Indonesian Income Tax Reform using bunching analysis. Beside a clear evidence on bunching around the first kink point, our empirical findings suggest that Indonesia exhibits special cases. We find an inertia of pre-reform bunching around the first kink point in later years as well as an extraordinary bunching above the first kink point in the post-reform periods.

Tax Responses at Low Taxable Incomes: Evidence from Germany*

AbstractThe desirability of a particular tax system depends on how different taxpayers react to it. Exploiting the personal allowance threshold and detailed German tax administration data, this paper examines responses at low taxable incomes to extend previous findings. Taxpayers bunch at the allowance threshold, and more so with non‐wage income. Unlike in other studies, wage earners also bunch, at least if they file a tax return, while incomes gross of deductions do not. Deductions account for a sizeable share of the sharp bunching mass of taxpayers with non‐wage income. A machine learning analysis identifies which deduction items predict such sharp bunching. The pattern of results suggests that local intensive‐margin real responses induce moderate deadweight loss.

Pathways to retirement through self-employment

AbstractWe examine the role of self-employment in retirement transitions using a panel of administrative tax data. We find that the hazard of self-employment increases at popular retirement ages associated with Social Security eligibility, particularly for those with greater retirement wealth. Late-career transitions to self-employment are associated with a larger drop in income than similar mid-career transitions. Data from the Health and Retirement Study suggest that hours worked also fall upon switching to self-employment. These results suggest that self-employment at older ages may serve as a ‘bridge job,’ allowing workers to gradually reduce hours and earnings along the pathway to retirement.

Do Audits Deter or Provoke Future Tax Noncompliance? Evidence on Self-Employed Taxpayers

Abstract This article employs unique tax administrative data and operational audit information, including risk scores used for audit selection, from a sample of approximately 7500 self-employed US taxpayers to investigate the effects of operational tax audits on future reporting behavior. Our estimates indicate that audits can have substantial deterrent or counter-deterrent effects, depending on the audit outcome. In the aggregate, taxable income is estimated to increase by roughly 15% 1 year after an operational audit. However, this figure masks substantial heterogeneity within the population. Among those taxpayers who receive an additional tax assessment, reported taxable income is estimated to be 64% higher in the first year after the audit (44% after 3 years) than it would have been in the absence of the audit. In contrast, among those taxpayers who do not receive an additional tax assessment, reported taxable income is estimated to be approximately 15% lower the year after the audit (21% 3 years later) than it would have been had the audit not taken place. Our results suggest that improved targeting of audits toward noncompliant taxpayers would not only yield more direct audit revenue but also pay dividends in terms of future tax collections.