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Household Behavior and the Tax Reform Act of 1986

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  • Jerry A. Hausman
  • James M. Poterba

Abstract

This paper evaluates the effects of the 1986 Tax Reform Act on household labor supply and savings. It describes the tax bill's effects on incentives to work and to save, and uses recent econometric estimates of labor supply and savings elasticities to describe the reform's impact on household behavior. Two factors lead us to conclude that the new law will have small aggregate effects. First, most households experience only small changes in their marginal tax rates. Forty-one percent of the taxpaying population will face marginal tax rates as high, or higher, under the new law as under the previous tax code. Only eleven percent of taxpayers receive marginal tax rate reductions of ten percentage points or more. Second, plausible estimates of both the labor supply and savings elasticities suggest that even for those households that receive rate reductions, behavioral changes will be small. Our analysis suggests that the tax reform will increase labor supply by about one percent, and slightly reduce private savings.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics in its series Working papers with number 437.

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Date of creation: Dec 1986
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Handle: RePEc:mit:worpap:437

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Postal: MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT), DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS, 50 MEMORIAL DRIVE CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS 02142 USA
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Web page: http://econ-www.mit.edu/
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Postal: MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT), DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS, 50 MEMORIAL DRIVE CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS 02142 USA
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References

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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  1. Summers, Lawrence H, 1981. "Capital Taxation and Accumulation in a Life Cycle Growth Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(4), pages 533-44, September.
  2. Hausman, Jerry A., 1985. "Taxes and labor supply," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 213-263 Elsevier.
  3. James M. Poterba & Lawrence H. Summers, 1984. "The Economic Effects of Dividend Taxation," Working papers 343, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
  4. King, Mervyn & Leape, Jonathan, 1985. "Wealth and Portfolio Composition: Theory and Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 43, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  5. Alan J. Auerbach & James M. Poterba, 1987. "Why Have Corporate Tax Revenues Declined?," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 1, pages 1-28 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Hansen, Lars Peter & Singleton, Kenneth J, 1983. "Stochastic Consumption, Risk Aversion, and the Temporal Behavior of Asset Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(2), pages 249-65, April.
  7. Michael J. Boskin & Laurence J. Kotlikoff & Douglas J. Puffert & John B. Shoven, 1987. "Social Security: A Financial Appraisal Across and Within Generations," NBER Working Papers 1891, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  8. Daniel R. Feenberg & Harvey S. Rosen, 1983. "Alternative Tax Treatments of the Family: Simulation Methodology and Results," NBER Chapters, in: Behavioral Simulation Methods in Tax Policy Analysis, pages 7-46 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. Yolanda K. Henderson, 1986. "Lessons from federal reform of business taxes," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Nov, pages 9-25.
  10. Lawrence H. Summers, 1982. "Tax Policy, the Rate of Return, and Savings," NBER Working Papers 0995, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  11. Diamond, P. A. & Hausman, J. A., 1984. "Individual retirement and savings behavior," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(1-2), pages 81-114.
  12. Boskin, Michael J, 1978. "Taxation, Saving, and the Rate of Interest," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(2), pages S3-27, April.
  13. MaCurdy, Thomas E, 1981. "An Empirical Model of Labor Supply in a Life-Cycle Setting," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(6), pages 1059-85, December.
  14. Hausman, Jerry & Ruud, Paul, 1984. "Family Labor Supply with Taxes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(2), pages 242-48, May.
  15. Jerry A. Hausman & Paul Ruud, 1984. "Family Labor Supply With Taxes," NBER Working Papers 1271, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  16. Killingsworth,Mark R., 1984. "Labor Supply," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521299169.
  17. Michael J. Boskin, 1978. "Taxation, Saving, and the Rate of Interest," NBER Chapters, in: Research in Taxation, pages 3-27 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Jellal, Mohamed & Garoupa, Nuno, 2002. "A Note on Optimal Law Enforcement under Asymmetric Information," MPRA Paper 38460, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  2. Hsing, Yu, 1996. "Estimating the laffer curve and policy implications," The Journal of Socio-Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 395-401.
  3. Alan J. Auerbach & Joel Slemrod, 1997. "The Economic Effects of the Tax Reform Act of 1986," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(2), pages 589-632, June.
  4. Kubik, Jeffrey D., 2004. "The incidence of personal income taxation: evidence from the tax reform act of 1986," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(7-8), pages 1567-1588, July.
  5. James M. Poterba & Steven F. Venti & David A. Wise, 1996. "Do 401(k) Contributions Crowd Out Other Persoanl Saving?," NBER Working Papers 4391, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Gagnepain, Philippe & Ivaldi, Marc & Martimort, David, 2010. "The Cost of Contract Renegotiation: Evidence from the Local Public Sector," IDEI Working Papers 637, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
  7. de Bartolome, Charles A.M., 1991. "Which Tax Rate Do People Use: Average or Marginal?," Working Papers 91-49, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
  8. Thomas Rapp & Nicolas Aubert, 2011. "Bank Employee Incentives and Stock Purchase Plans Participation," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 185-203, December.
  9. Jane K. Dokko, 2008. "The effect of taxation on lifecycle labor supply: results from a quasi-experiment," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2008-24, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  10. Ochmann, Richard, 2011. "Distributional and Welfare Effects of Germany's Year 2000 Tax Reform," Annual Conference 2011 (Frankfurt, Main): The Order of the World Economy - Lessons from the Crisis 48686, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
  11. Jellal, Mohamed, 2009. "Migration des Elites Norme Culturelle et Formation de la Diaspora
    [Brain Drain Social Norm and Diaspora Formation]    ," MPRA Paper 18011, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  12. Gasmi, F. & Laffont, J. J. & Sharkey, W. W., 2002. "The natural monopoly test reconsidered: an engineering process-based approach to empirical analysis in telecommunications," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 435-459, April.
  13. Kumar, Anil, 2008. "Labor supply, deadweight loss and tax reform act of 1986: A nonparametric evaluation using panel data," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1-2), pages 236-253, February.
  14. Bos, Dieter & Peters, Wolfgang, 1995. "Double inefficiency in optimally organized firms," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 355-375, March.
  15. Stephenson, E. Frank, 1998. "Average marginal tax rates revisited," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 389-409, April.

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