Do Taxpayers Bunch at Kink Points?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Saez, Emmanuel
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Berkeley
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.2.3.180
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 180-212
• 关键词: tax; econometrics

摘要

This paper uses tax return data to analyze bunching at the kink points of the US income tax schedule We estimate the compensated elasticity of reported income with respect to (one minus) the marginal tax rate using bunching evidence We find clear evidence of bunching around the first kink point of the Earned Income Tax Credit but concentrated solely among the self-employed A simple tax evasion model can account for those results We find evidence of bunching at the threshold of the first income tax bracket where tax liability starts but no evidence of bunching at any other kink point (JEL H23, H24, H26)