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The Effect of Anticipated Tax Changes on Intertemporal Labor Supply and the Realization of Taxable Income

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  • Looney, Adam

    (Federal Reserve Board of Governors)

  • Singhal, Monica

    (Harvard U)

Abstract

We use anticipated changes in tax rates associated with changes in family composition to estimate intertemporal labor supply elasticities and elasticities of taxable income with respect to the net-of-tax wage rate. Changes in the ages of children can affect marginal tax rates through provisions of the tax code that are tied to child age and dependent status. We identify behavioral responses to these tax changes by comparing families who experienced a tax rate change to families who had a similar change in dependents but no resulting tax rate change. A primary advantage of our approach is that these changes can be anticipated, allowing us to estimate substitution effects that are not confounded by life-cycle income effects. We estimate an intertemporal elasticity of family labor earnings of 0.75 for families earning between $35,000 and $85,000 in the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and find very similar estimates using the IRS-NBER individual tax panel.

Suggested Citation

  • Looney, Adam & Singhal, Monica, 2006. "The Effect of Anticipated Tax Changes on Intertemporal Labor Supply and the Realization of Taxable Income," Working Paper Series rwp06-031, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
  • Handle: RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp06-031
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    Cited by:

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    2. Soren Blomquist & Anil Kumar & Che-Yuan Liang & Whitney K. Newey, 2014. "Individual heterogeneity, nonlinear budget sets, and taxable income," CeMMAP working papers 21/14, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    3. Carina Neisser, 2021. "The Elasticity of Taxable Income: A Meta-Regression Analysis [The top 1% in international and historical perspective]," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(640), pages 3365-3391.
    4. Isabel Z. Martínez & Emmanuel Saez & Michael Siegenthaler, 2021. "Intertemporal Labor Supply Substitution? Evidence from the Swiss Income Tax Holidays," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(2), pages 506-546, February.
    5. Tzu-Ting Yang, 2016. "Family Labor Supply and the Timing of Cash Transfers: Evidence from the Earned Income Tax Credit," IEAS Working Paper : academic research 16-A012, Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
    6. Soren Blomquist & Anil Kumar & Che-Yuan Liang & Whitney K. Newey, 2022. "Nonlinear Budget Set Regressions for the Random Utility Model," Working Papers 2219, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    7. Raj Chetty, 2009. "Is the Taxable Income Elasticity Sufficient to Calculate Deadweight Loss? The Implications of Evasion and Avoidance," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 31-52, August.
    8. Emmanuel Saez & Joel Slemrod & Seth H. Giertz, 2012. "The Elasticity of Taxable Income with Respect to Marginal Tax Rates: A Critical Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(1), pages 3-50, March.
    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. Philippe Wingender & Sara LaLumia, 2015. "Income Effects in Labor Supply: Evidence from Child-Related Tax Benefits," Department of Economics Working Papers 2015-04, Department of Economics, Williams College.

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    JEL classification:

    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue

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