IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/11221.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Distributional analysis of prospective 2009 US individual income taxes: current law and the candidates’ tax plans

Author

Listed:
  • Berliant, Marcus
  • Strauss, Robert P.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to compare the distributional characteristics of two presidential candidates’ proposed reforms to the US federal individual income tax. Using an anonymous sample of tax return data from the Brookings-Urban Institute Tax Policy Center and the Center’s simulations of 2009 tax law and the two proposals, we compare the vertical and horizontal equity of the three individual income tax regimes. Surprisingly, there is very little difference among the three proposed individual income tax regimes in terms of vertical and horizontal equity. However, when the initial effective tax rate positions and economic incomes of each pair of taxpayers are compared to the new effective tax rate positions under the two proposals, we find that the Obama proposal makes the tax system more progressive than 2009 law. This change is much more pronounced than under the McCain proposal. On the other hand, when these initial positions are compared to the two proposals viz. a viz. horizontal equity, the McCain proposed tax system is more horizontally equitable than 2009 tax law, and more horizontally equitable than the Obama proposal is when compared to 2009 tax law.

Suggested Citation

  • Berliant, Marcus & Strauss, Robert P., 2008. "Distributional analysis of prospective 2009 US individual income taxes: current law and the candidates’ tax plans," MPRA Paper 11221, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:11221
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11221/1/MPRA_paper_11221.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cowell, Frank A. & Kuga, Kiyoshi, 1981. "Additivity and the entropy concept: An axiomatic approach to inequality measurement," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 131-143, August.
    2. Shorrocks, A F, 1980. "The Class of Additively Decomposable Inequality Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(3), pages 613-625, April.
    3. Jenkins, Stephen P., 1988. "Empirical measurement of horizontal inequity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 305-329, December.
    4. Kolm, Serge-Christophe, 1976. "Unequal inequalities. II," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 82-111, August.
    5. Fields, Gary S & Fei, John C H, 1978. "On Inequality Comparisons," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(2), pages 303-316, March.
    6. Kaplow, Louis, 1989. "Horizontal Equity: Measures in Search of a Principle," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 42(2), pages 139-54, June.
    7. Musgrave, Richard A., 1990. "Horizontal Equity, Once More," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 43(2), pages 113-22, June.
    8. Hagenaars, Aldi J M, 1987. "A Class of Poverty Indices," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 28(3), pages 583-607, October.
    9. Kakwani, Nanok C, 1977. "Measurement of Tax Progressivity: An International Comparison," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 87(345), pages 71-80, March.
    10. Anthony F. Shorrocks & James E. Foster, 1987. "Transfer Sensitive Inequality Measures," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(3), pages 485-497.
    11. Kolm, Serge-Christophe, 1976. "Unequal inequalities. I," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 416-442, June.
    12. Feldstein, Martin, 1976. "On the theory of tax reform," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1-2), pages 77-104.
    13. Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1984. "Inequality Decomposition by Population Subgroups," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1369-1385, November.
    14. Mervyn A. King, 1980. "An Index of Inequality: With Applications to Horizontal Equity and Social Mobility," NBER Working Papers 0468, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Dominique Thon, 1979. "On Measuring Poverty," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 25(4), pages 429-439, December.
    16. Plotnick, Robert, 1982. "The concept and measurement of horizontal inequity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 373-391, April.
    17. Wertz, Kenneth L, 1978. "A Method for Measuring the Relative Taxation of Families," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 60(1), pages 145-150, February.
    18. Yaakov Kondor, 1975. "Value Judgements Implied By The Use Of Various Measures Of Income Inequality," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 21(3), pages 309-321, September.
    19. Bourguignon, Francois, 1979. "Decomposable Income Inequality Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(4), pages 901-920, July.
    20. Ebert, Udo, 1987. "Size and distribution of incomes as determinants of social welfare," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 23-33, February.
    21. King, Mervyn A, 1983. "An Index of Inequality: With Applications to Horizontal Equity and Social Mobility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(1), pages 99-115, January.
    22. Cowell, Frank, 2006. "Inequality: measurement," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 2686, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    23. John P. Formby & David Sykes, 1984. "State Income Tax Progressivity," Public Finance Review, , vol. 12(2), pages 153-165, April.
    24. Suits, Daniel B, 1977. "Measurement of Tax Progressivity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(4), pages 747-752, September.
    25. Louis Kaplow, 1985. "Horizontal Equity: Measures in Search of a Principle," NBER Working Papers 1679, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    26. repec:bla:revinw:v:37:y:1991:i:3:p:287-99 is not listed on IDEAS
    27. repec:bla:revinw:v:21:y:1975:i:3:p:309-21 is not listed on IDEAS
    28. Kaplow, Louis, 1989. "Horizontal Equity: Measures in Search of a Principle," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 42(2), pages 139-154, June.
    29. Blackorby, Charles & Donaldson, David, 1980. "A Theoretical Treatment of Indices of Absolute Inequality," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 21(1), pages 107-136, February.
    30. Plotnick, Robert, 1981. "A Measure of Horizontal Inequity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 63(2), pages 283-288, May.
    31. Musgrave, Richard A., 1990. "Horizontal Equity, Once More," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 43(2), pages 113-122, June.
    32. Gouveia, Miguel & Strauss, Robert P., 1994. "Effective Federal Individual Tax Functions: An Exploratory Empirical Analysis," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 47(2), pages 317-39, June.
    33. repec:bla:revinw:v:25:y:1979:i:4:p:429-39 is not listed on IDEAS
    34. Blackorby, Charles & Donaldson, David, 1978. "Measures of relative equality and their meaning in terms of social welfare," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 59-80, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tulai Constantin & Moga Aura Carmen & Schiau Laura Liana & Paltinean Luminita, 2010. "Equity And Income Tax Redistribution," Annals of Faculty of Economics, University of Oradea, Faculty of Economics, vol. 1(2), pages 652-656, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Duclos, Jean-Yves & Jalbert, Vincent & Araar, Abdelkrim, 2003. "Classical Horizontal Inequity and Reranking: an Integrating Approach," Cahiers de recherche 0306, CIRPEE.
    2. Duclos, Jean-Yves & Jalbert, Vincent & Araar, Abdelkrim, 2000. "Classical Horizontal Inequity and Reranking: an Integrated Approach," Cahiers de recherche 0002, Université Laval - Département d'économique.
    3. Bibi, Sami & Duclos, Jean-Yves, 2007. "Equity and policy effectiveness with imperfect targeting," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 109-140, May.
    4. Marcus C. Berliant & Robert P. Strauss, 1993. "State and federal tax equity: Estimates before and after the Tax Reform Act of 1986," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(1), pages 9-43.
    5. Erlend Bø & Peter Lambert & Thor Thoresen, 2012. "Horizontal inequity under a dual income tax system: principles and measurement," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 19(5), pages 625-640, October.
    6. Duclos, Jean-Yves, 1998. "Social evaluation functions, economic isolation and the Suits index of progressivity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 103-121, July.
    7. Duclos, J.Y., 1995. "Economic Isolation, Inequality, and the Suits Index of Progressivity," Papers 9510, Laval - Recherche en Politique Economique.
    8. Wagstaff, Adam & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 1997. "Progressivity, horizontal equity and reranking in health care finance: a decomposition analysis for the Netherlands," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 499-516, October.
    9. Nanak Kakwani & Hyun Hwa Son, 2021. "Normative Measures of Tax Progressivity: an International Comparison," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 19(1), pages 185-212, March.
    10. Ebert U., 1996. "Income inequality and differences in household size," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 57-58, February.
    11. Louis Kaplow, 2003. "Transition Policy: A Conceptual Framework," NBER Working Papers 9596, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Sundberg, Gun, 1996. "Redistributive Effects of the Swedish Health Care Financing System," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 115, Stockholm School of Economics.
    13. Foster, James E. & Shneyerov, Artyom A., 2000. "Path Independent Inequality Measures," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 199-222, April.
    14. Jean-Yves Duclos & Peter Lambert, "undated". "A Normative Approach to Measuring Classical Horizontal Inequity," Discussion Papers 97/3, Department of Economics, University of York.
    15. Vargas, Carmen, 1996. "A social welfare model for the evaluation of the spanish income tax system," UC3M Working papers. Economics 4100, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    16. Satya Chakravarty, 2001. "The Variance as a subgroup decomposable measure of inequality," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 79-95, January.
    17. Duclos, J.Y., 1995. "Relative Performance, Relative Deprivation and Generalised Gini Indices of Inequality and Horizontal Inequity," Papers 9514, Laval - Recherche en Politique Economique.
    18. Alan J. Auerbach & Kevin A. Hassett, 2002. "A New Measure of Horizontal Equity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1116-1125, September.
    19. Frank A Cowell, 2003. "Theil, Inequality and the Structure of Income Distribution," STICERD - Distributional Analysis Research Programme Papers 67, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    20. Ebert, Udo, 1997. "Linear inequality concepts and social welfare," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 6596, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tax equity; McCain tax plan; Obama tax plan;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:11221. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.