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Business Incomes at the Top

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  • Wojciech Kopczuk
  • Eric Zwick

Abstract

Business income constitutes a large and increasing share of income and wealth at the top of the distribution. We discuss how tax policy treats and shapes how businesses are organized and how they distribute economic gains to owners, with the focus on closely-held and pass-through firms. These considerations influence whether and how labor and capital income is observed in economic data and feed into research controversies regarding the measurement of inequality and the progressivity of the tax code. We discuss the importance of these issues in the US, and highlight that limited evidence from other countries suggests that they are likely to be important elsewhere.

Suggested Citation

  • Wojciech Kopczuk & Eric Zwick, 2020. "Business Incomes at the Top," NBER Working Papers 27752, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27752
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    Cited by:

    1. Nishant Yonzan & Branko Milanovic & Salvatore Morelli & Janet Gornick, 2022. "Drawing a Line: Comparing the Estimation of Top Incomes between Tax Data and Household Survey Data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 67-95, March.
    2. Bukowski, Pawel & Chrostek, Pawel & Novokmet, Filip & Skawinski, Marek, 2023. "Income inequality in the 21st century Poland," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121282, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Burdín, Gabriel & De Rosa, Mauricio & Vigorito, Andrea & Vilá, Joan, 2022. "Falling inequality and the growing capital income share: Reconciling divergent trends in survey and tax data," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    4. Paweł Bukowski & Filip Novokmet, 2021. "Between communism and capitalism: long-term inequality in Poland, 1892–2015," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 187-239, June.
    5. Andreas Bergh & Anders Kärnä, 2022. "Explaining the rise of populism in European democracies 1980–2018: The role of labor market institutions and inequality," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 103(7), pages 1719-1731, December.
    6. Ram Singh, 2022. "Do the Wealthy Underreport their Income? Analysing Relationship between Wealth and Reported Income in India," Working papers 331, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
    7. Massenz, Gabriella, 2023. "On the behavioral effects of tax policy," Other publications TiSEM eb44a9f7-b859-480d-b2e4-4, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    8. Selahattin Imrohoroglu, 2023. "Mpk," CIGS Working Paper Series 24-002E, The Canon Institute for Global Studies.
    9. Kwon, Spencer Y. & Ma, Yueran & Zimmermann, Kaspar, 2022. "100 years of rising corporate concentration," SAFE Working Paper Series 359, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    10. Bukowski, Pawel & Chrostek, Paweł & Novokmet, Filip & Skawiński, Marek, 2023. "Income inequality in the 21st century Poland," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121036, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Adhikari, Bibek & Alm, James & Harris, Timothy F., 2021. "Small business tax compliance under third-party reporting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    12. Bukowski, Pawel & Novokmet, Filip, 2021. "Between communism and capitalism: long-term inequality in Poland, 1892–2015," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 110221, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. Marius Leckelt & Johannes König & David Richter & Mitja D. Back & Carsten Schröder, 2022. "The personality traits of self-made and inherited millionaires," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-12, December.
    14. Pawel Bukowski & Pawel Chrostek & Filip Novokmet & Marek Skawinski, 2023. "Income inequality in the 21st century Poland," CEP Discussion Papers dp1966, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    15. Oz Shy, 2021. "College Education, Earning Inequality, and Market Power," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 334-357, December.
    16. Jarkko Harju & Toni Juuti & Tuomas Matikka, 2023. "Stairway to Heaven? Selection into Entrepreneurship, Income Mobility and Firm Performance," Working Papers 17, Finnish Centre of Excellence in Tax Systems Research.
    17. Francesco Furno, 2021. "The Macroeconomic Effects of Corporate Tax Reforms," Papers 2111.12799, arXiv.org.
    18. Zwick, Eric, 2023. "Comments on “Wealth inequality dynamics in Europe and the United States: Understanding the determinants” by Blanchet and Martínez-Toledano," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 44-47.
    19. Mauricio De Rosa & Joan Vilá, 2022. "Beyond tax-survey combination: inequality and the blurry household-firm border," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 22-10, Instituto de Economía - IECON.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D33 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Factor Income Distribution
    • E25 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Aggregate Factor Income Distribution
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies
    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies
    • H32 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Firm

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