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...

Like-kind exchanges enable taxpayers to defer capital gains taxes when certain types of property are exchanged rather than sold. The deferred gains from such exchanges have grown over the years, peaking at over $100 billion before the onset of the Great Recession. Equally noteworthy, the share...

We examine the responses of high-income taxpayers to the increases in the top income tax rates under the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. We use a large panel of tax returns spanning 1987 to 1996 to estimate the elasticity of taxable income using a difference-in-differences approach....

Access to IRS personal income tax records improves researchers' ability to track U.S. income and inequality, especially at the very top of the distribution (Piketty and Saez 2003). However, rather than following standard Haig-Simons income definitions, tax form income measures were designed to...

Access to IRS personal income tax records improves researchers' ability to track U.S. income and inequality, especially at the very top of the distribution (Piketty and Saez 2003). However, rather than following standard Haig-Simons income definitions, tax form income measures were designed to...

The distribution of income in the United States has long been of interest to economists. Using data on tax returns, Piketty and Saez (2003) concluded that top income shares had more than doubled since 1980. This paper helped trigger broader public concerns about rising inequality and stagnating...

This paper examines the itemized deduction for donations of property to charitable organizations, its benefits to charitable organizations and their beneficiaries, and the associated tax expenditures. In 2005, taxpayers deducted $48 billion in noncash donations, resulting in a tax expenditure of...

The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA) and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (JGTRRA) incorporated the main elements of the Bush Administration’s tax proposals. The principal feature of this legislation was the reduction in individual...

Proposals to reform the tax treatment of charitable contributions would extend the charitable deduction to non–itemizers and impose a floor under the charitable deduction of all taxpayers. This paper uses PSID and IRS data along with common measures of tax sensitivity to explore the likely...