2004

Federal Income Tax Data from Non-Tax Public Use Files: What you need to know if you're analyzing the effects of public policy

Wednesday, 8:30am - 10:00am

Speakers:

Ralph Rector
Project Manager and Research Fellow, Center for Data Analysis, The Heritage Foundation
bio
Amy O'Hara
Survey Statistician, U.S. Census Bureau
bio
Norbert Michel
Policy Analyst, Center for Data Analysis, The Heritage Foundation
bio

Discussants:

Kevin Moore
Economist, Federal Reserve Board
bio
Eric Keil
Economist, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
bio

Moderator and Session Organizer:

Ralph Rector

Abstract:

The primary source for U.S. income tax data is the Statistics of Income (SOI) Division of the Internal Revenue Service. However, these data often are of limited value to researchers because they lack important demographic and other household information. As a result, researchers who are analyzing the effects of public policy often rely on tax data in household surveys such as the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). In addition, a special tax module was added to the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) specifically to help researchers study the economic and behavioral effects of the 2001 "tax rebate" that was part of the Economic Growth and Tax Recovery Act. In this session, presenters will compare the last several years of tax and income data from the CPS to data from the SOI, describe updates that are being made to the method of generating tax data for the CPS and SIPP files, and discuss the uses that have been made of the CEX tax module data and some of the difficulties encountered when using this data.

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