scholarly journals Saving for retirement by the self-employed

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 316-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID JOULFAIAN

AbstractWhen compared with wage earners, the self-employed are reported to have a lower take up rate of tax-favored retirement plans in the United States. Using panel data from federal income tax returns for the years 1999–2006, this paper explores the various factors that shape the observed pattern of contributions to such plans by the self-employed. Consistent with previous findings in the literature, contributions rise with income, tax rates, as well as savings in taxable accounts. More interestingly, the novel findings in this paper address the role that debt plays in shaping contributions. While housing and business-related debts are accorded similar tax treatment, the findings show that contributions decline with business debt whereas they rise with household debt.

2020 ◽  
pp. 089976402097769
Author(s):  
Nicolas J. Duquette

I compute the share of U.S. household giving accounted for by the American tax units donating the largest amounts over the 1960–2012 period from repeated cross-sectional samples of federal income tax returns. The share of donations accounted for by a minority of top donors rose sharply over this period. Donor concentration has risen both because the largest gifts have grown larger and because more households give little or nothing in any given year.


2022 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Seiichiro Mozumi

Abstract In the United States, tax favoritism—an approach that has weakened the extractive capacity of the federal government by providing tax loopholes and preferences for taxpayers—has remained since the 1930s. It has consumed the amount of tax revenue the government can spend and therefore weakened the possibility of the redistribution of fiscal resources. It has also made the federal tax system complicated and inequitable, resulting in undermining taxpayer consent. Therefore, since the 1930s, a tax reform to create a simple, fair, and equitable federal income tax system with the capacity to raise revenue has been long overdue. Many scholars have evaluated the Tax Reform Act of 1969 (TRA69), which Richard M. Nixon signed into law on December 30, 1969, as one of the most successful steps toward accomplishing this goal. This article demonstrates that TRA69 left tax favoritism in the United States. Furthermore, it points out that TRA69 turned taxpayers against the idea of federal taxation, a shift in public perception that greatly impacted tax reform in the years to follow.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roni Frish ◽  
Noam Zussman ◽  
Sophia Igdalov

AbstractThis study examines the effect of an income tax reform on wages. An Israeli reform implemented in 2003–2009 reduced individuals’ marginal income tax rate by 7–17 percentage points. We utilized the differential and non-monotonic marginal tax rate reduction, and used Israel Tax Authority panel data of wage earners, merged with Labor Force Surveys. We found that in the business sector, the elasticity of reported gross wages relative to the net-of-tax rate is about 0.1. The wage earners in the lowest wage quintile were not affected by the tax reform, those in the second and third quintiles did not respond to the tax cut, but elasticity increased with wage, reaching about 0.4 in the upper decile. We did not find statistically significant differences in elasticity by gender, ethnicity, or education.


Author(s):  
Radha Devi Sharma

Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine is a story of a young Punjabi woman named Jasmine whose life takes her from India to the United States, where she goes through many different destinies with her effort to reinvent her coherent self. Searching for and defining a new identity is a central question for immigrants living in a foreign land. The confusion of identity and cultural conflict pushes the immigrants into an identity crisis. The novel exposes how Jasmine, the female protagonist, as an outsider, strives to shape her identity to fit in the mainstream American society. Fortunately, she encounters confirmations of her shifting identity in different stages of her life. Instead of rejecting these identities and names in various phases, she seeks to create a harmonious relationship with those identities. In this context, this paper tries to explore on how she struggles throughout her life to reinvent the coherent self by her constant effort to assimilate to the alien culture and setting.Crossing the Border: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Vol.4(1) 2016: 29-38


2016 ◽  
Vol 131 (2) ◽  
pp. 519-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Saez ◽  
Gabriel Zucman

Abstract This paper combines income tax returns with macroeconomic household balance sheets to estimate the distribution of wealth in the United States since 1913. We estimate wealth by capitalizing the incomes reported by individual taxpayers, accounting for assets that do not generate taxable income. We successfully test our capitalization method in three micro datasets where we can observe both income and wealth: the Survey of Consumer Finance, linked estate and income tax returns, and foundations’ tax records. We find that wealth concentration was high in the beginning of the twentieth century, fell from 1929 to 1978, and has continuously increased since then. The top 0.1% wealth share has risen from 7% in 1978 to 22% in 2012, a level almost as high as in 1929. Top wealth-holders are younger today than in the 1960s and earn a higher fraction of the economy’s labor income. The bottom 90% wealth share first increased up to the mid-1980s and then steadily declined. The increase in wealth inequality in recent decades is due to the upsurge of top incomes combined with an increase in saving rate inequality. We explain how our findings can be reconciled with Survey of Consumer Finances and estate tax data.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nerijus Cerniauskas ◽  
Alain Jousten

Abstract We estimate effective and optimal net income tax schedules and compare them to the estimated statutory rates for the case of Lithuania for the period 2014–2015. Values of effective net tax rates are estimated from the survey of EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions; the statutory net tax rates are estimated with the European tax-benefit simulator EUROMOD, whereas optimal net taxes are calculated via Saez (2002) methodology. We find that the three net tax schedules are similar for employees in the middle of the income distribution. At the bottom of the income distribution, optimal net tax schedules suggest higher in-work benefits. The net tax schedules diverge substantially for the self-employed. At the top of the income distribution, where the majority of self-employed are concentrated, the self-employed are required to pay 15 cents less net taxes per Euro than employees—and they effectively pay 29 cents less.


Author(s):  
Alexander Pelaez ◽  
Deb Sledgianowski ◽  
Steven Petra ◽  
Jianbing Zhu ◽  
Nooshin Nejati

This paper proposes and tests a methodology for the development of a simulation for individual tax returns in the United States, enabling students of taxation and interested parties to examine changes to the tax code, examine the effects of tax planning alternatives, and conduct repeated experimental testing on the tax return data.  The simulation produced data for 147,000 tax returns, representing approximately 1% of the population of filed tax returns as noted by the IRS/SOI.  We present the methodology on how we created the simulation and compare the tax returns of the simulation to the measures provided by the IRS. Our simulated return data very closely matched the number and combined dollar value of the IRS/SOI summary data at the adjusted gross income (AGI), state, and filing status levels.


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