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Bunching and Non-Bunching at Kink Points of the Swedish Tax schedule

Author

Listed:
  • Bastani, Spencer

    (Uppsala Center for Fiscal Studies)

  • Selin, Håkan

    (Uppsala Center for Fiscal Studies)

Abstract

The compensated taxable income elasticity at a given income level is proportional to the number of individuals who bunch at a convex kink point. This holds true even in the presence of optimization frictions if the jump in marginal tax rates is suciently large. In this paper we estimate bunching of taxpayers at a very large kink point of the Swedish tax schedule. During the period of study the change in the log net-of-tax rate reached a maximum value of 45.6%. Interestingly, we nd no economically signi cant bunching of wage earners at this large kink. Self-employed individuals, on the other hand,display clear bunching, but the implied elasticities are not very large. Following Chetty (2011) we calculate an upper bound on the structural elasticity for wage earners consistent with our estimate. If wage earners on average tolerate 1% of their disposable income in optimization costs, the upper bound on the taxable income elasticity is 0.39. We also evaluate the performance of the bunching estimator by performing Monte Carlo simulations.

Suggested Citation

  • Bastani, Spencer & Selin, Håkan, 2011. "Bunching and Non-Bunching at Kink Points of the Swedish Tax schedule," Working Paper Series, Center for Fiscal Studies 2011:12, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:uufswp:2011_012
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    bunching; taxable income; bounds; optimization frictions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H42 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Private Goods

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