Recent econometric studies of the effect of taxes on charitable giving have called into question the behavioral parameters derived from cross-section models. In particular, these studies imply that taxes affect contributions primarily by influencing their timing, not their long-term levels. The...

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...