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Taxes, Regulations of Businesses and Evolution of Income Inequality in the US

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  • Sebastian Dyrda

    (University of Toronto)

  • Benjamin Pugsley

    (University of Notre Dame)

Abstract

From 1980 to 2012 the share of U.S.~business receipts from businesses organized as pass-through entities (for example LLCs and S-corporations) rather than traditional C-corporations nearly triples following a sequence of tax reforms that reduced the tax rate on business income that "passes through" to an entrepreneur's individual income tax form. We show this shift in the pattern of business organization is economically significant. We provide novel evidence, using firm-level administrative data, that the tax reforms had significant effects on the employment dynamics of the US firms. We also propose a reduced form decomposition of data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, which reveals the increase in pass through entities explains over 50 percent of the increase in the share of pre-tax income for the top 1 percent of households. Importantly, this increase is not just accounting: there is an economic trade-off when choosing a legal form that affects the investment behavior of the entrepreneurs. We develop a heterogeneous agent equilibrium model with workers, entrepreneurs and endogenous choice of legal forms to capture a key trade-off between tax benefits and diversification of investment risk. We test the model using confidential firm-level microdata from the U.S.~ Census, and with the model calibrated to capture the actual firm dynamics across legal forms following several tax reform episodes, we quantify the contribution of tax reforms through the business reorganization channel on the evolution of income, wealth and consumption inequality of workers and entrepreneurs.

Suggested Citation

  • Sebastian Dyrda & Benjamin Pugsley, 2018. "Taxes, Regulations of Businesses and Evolution of Income Inequality in the US," 2018 Meeting Papers 318, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  • Handle: RePEc:red:sed018:318
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    2. Bilicka, Katarzyna & Raei, Sepideh, 2023. "Output distortions and the choice of legal form of organization," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    3. Barış Kaymak & Immo Schott, 2023. "Corporate Tax Cuts and the Decline in the Manufacturing Labor Share," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(6), pages 2371-2408, November.
    4. Erosa, Andrés & González, Beatriz, 2019. "Taxation and the life cycle of firms," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 114-130.
    5. Adhikari, Bibek & Alm, James & Harris, Timothy F., 2021. "Small business tax compliance under third-party reporting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    6. Anmol Bhandari & Ellen R. McGrattan, 2017. "Sweat Equity in U.S. Private Business," Staff Report 560, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    7. Matthew Smith & Danny Yagan & Owen Zidar & Eric Zwick, 2019. "Capitalists in the Twenty-First Century," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 134(4), pages 1675-1745.
    8. Teegawende Zeida, 2022. "The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA): A Quantitative Evaluation of Key Provisions," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 46, pages 74-97, October.
    9. Beatriz González, 2020. "Macroeconomics, firm dynamics and IPOs," Working Papers 2030, Banco de España.
    10. Corina Boar & Virgiliu Midrigan, 2020. "Efficient Redistribution," NBER Working Papers 27622, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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