Over 18 million taxpayers are projected to receive the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in tax year 1997, at a total cost to the federal government of about 25 billion dollars. The EITC is refundable, so that any amount of the credit exceeding the family's tax liability is returned in the form of...

Over the period 1960 - 1983 the proportion of federal tax revenue raised by taxation of labor supply has risen from 57-77 percent. In this paper, we specify and estimate a model of family labor supply which treats both federal and state taxation. Husbands and wives labor supply are treated...

This paper analyzes the optimal income tax treatment of couples. Each couple is modelled as a single rational economic agent supplying labor along two dimensions: primary and secondary earnings. We consider fully general joint income tax systems. Separate taxation is never optimal if social...

We examine the effect of the 1996 Tax Reform Act on the labor supply of affluent men. The Act reduced marginal tax rates for the affluent more than for other taxpayers. Using instrumental-variables methods with a variety of identifying variables, we find essentially no responsiveness of the...

In a series of major expansions starting in 1987, the earned income tax credit (EITC) has become a central part of the federal government's anti-poverty strategy. In this paper, we examine the impact of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86), which included an expansion of the EITC, on labor force...

Since its inception in 1975, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has grown into the largest, Federally-funded means-tested cash assistance program in the United States. In this chapter, we review the political history of the EITC, its rules and goals and provide a broad set of program statistics...

This paper examines the employment effects of the earned income tax credit (EITC). We use a unique dataset, created by matching administrative data from public assistance records, unemployment insurance records, and federal tax returns for a sample of California residents. We conduct a set of...

Using longitudinal data on marriage and children from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1967 to 2016, we characterize women's exposure to the federal and state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) during their first two decades of adulthood. We use measures of this exposure to estimate the...

Currently U.S. Federal Income Tax schedules do not maintain marriage neutrality, that is, tax liabilities depend upon marital status. This paper shows the extent and distribution of the departure from neutrality both under current law and the new (1981) tax act. The new tax law establishes a...

This paper examines the appropriate tax treatment of the family in a series of analytical models and numerical examples. For a population of taxpaying couples which differ in earning capacity, we derive the optimal tax rates for each potential earner. These rates depend crucially upon own and...