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I haven't researched this at all, so perhaps these type of studies are out there, but I think it would be interesting to see how exemptions/credits and deductio
by greedo 5y ago
I haven't researched this at all, so perhaps these type of studies are out there, but I think it would be interesting to see how exemptions/credits and deductions were actually utilized over time. We have roughly 200B tax returns filed since the income tax was created (not counting corporate returns).
It would be good to be able to visualize how tax collections changed over time etc.
- bzbarsky 5y agoThere are absolutely studies out there. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57061 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57061 and similar for other years (this is data through 2018, but published this year, presumably after they are pretty sure that various delayed tax return filing has happened and whatnot). This only goes back to 1979, though. If you find something with data older than that I would be interested. Of interest in the document I linked to is "Exhibit 11. Average Federal Tax Rates, by Income Group, 1979 to 2018" and "Exhibit 12. Average Federal Tax Rates Among Households in the Top 1 Percent, 1979 to 2018", with the latter showing top 0.1% and top 0.01% average tax rates. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57061#data https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57061#data has links to various xls and csv files, including the data tables those graphs are generated from. Note that per "Appendix C" of this document, the tax rates in these graphs include some sort of individualized attribution of corporate income tax incidence and that attribution could easily be quibbled with. The more detailed data tables include more breakdowns into what fraction of tax is attributed to this source, but I didn't find it more finer grained than "top 1%".
- greedo 5y agoOh awesome find, thank you! It's too bad it only goes back to 1979, I'd love to see changes since before Kennedy.