{
  "id": "RL32693",
  "type": "CRS Report",
  "typeId": "REPORTS",
  "number": "RL32693",
  "active": false,
  "source": "EveryCRSReport.com, University of North Texas Libraries Government Documents Department",
  "versions": [
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      "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
      "id": 422211,
      "date": "2010-12-17",
      "retrieved": "2016-04-07T01:19:56.953256",
      "title": "Distribution of the Tax Burden Across Individuals: An Overview",
      "summary": "Distributional issues often lie at the center of tax policy debates. Distributional analysis may address several issues: How should the tax burden be distributed or, are progressive (increasing as a share of income as income rises) taxes justified? What is the estimated distribution of the current system? How does a particular proposal change that distribution?\nUnlike many analyses that study optimal behavior related to allocative issues and economic efficiency, economic analysis cannot be used to answer the questions of how the tax burden should be distributed. Such an answer would depend on social preferences. Economic analysis can, however, identify trade-offs and frame the issue analytically. For example, a number of plausible answers to this question could justify progressive tax structures.\nMethodological issues, such as the income classifier, the unit of analysis, and assumptions regarding incidence all affect the estimates of the distribution of the current tax burden. Yet all show a similar qualitative result: the federal tax system is progressive throughout its range, although it tends to get much flatter at the top. This pattern is primarily due to the individual income tax, which is quite progressive, and actually provides subsidies at lower-income levels. The other major tax is the payroll tax, which is a larger burden than the individual income tax for more than 80% of the population. This tax is first progressive and then regressive (effective tax rates fall with income). The corporate income and the estate taxes, while much smaller, are also progressive, whereas excise taxes are regressive. This overall progressive pattern has been in place historically, and is expected to continue in the future, although effective tax rates are currently low compared with other periods.\nUnlike the federal tax system, state and local taxes tend to be regressive. Thus, a progressive federal tax system would be necessary to prevent overall U.S. taxes from being regressive. The combined taxes appear slightly progressive. Looking at taxes from a lifetime perspective would move the system more toward a proportional tax because average lifetime incomes reduces the variability of income. Studies have suggested that overall lifetime taxes are roughly proportional to income.\nMany different measures have been used to characterize the effects of a particular tax change on the distribution of income. A very different impression of tax changes may be obtained depending on the measure used. One popular measure, the percentage change in tax, can be misleading, because as taxes become very small even a negligible absolute change in taxes leads to a very large percentage change. For measuring the relative distribution of income, percentage change in disposable income provides a better measure of how resources are distributed. By this measure, the recent tax cuts made incomes less equal.\nThis report will not be updated.",
      "type": "CRS Report",
      "typeId": "REPORTS",
      "active": false,
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          "url": "http://www.crs.gov/Reports/RL32693",
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          "url": "http://www.crs.gov/Reports/pdf/RL32693",
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      ],
      "topics": []
    },
    {
      "source": "University of North Texas Libraries Government Documents Department",
      "sourceLink": "https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc462383/",
      "id": "RL32693_2004Dec13",
      "date": "2004-12-13",
      "retrieved": "2014-12-05T09:57:41",
      "title": "Distribution of the Tax Burden Across Individuals: An Overview",
      "summary": "This report discusses in the first section different philosophies about how the tax burden should be distributed, and what those philosophies imply for the shape of the tax system. In particular, it addresses the question of the justifications for a progressive tax system (one where the share of income collected as a tax rises as income rises). This section is presented for the interested reader, but is not a necessary preliminary to examining the analysis in the second section, which presents estimates of the distribution of the federal and total U.S. tax burden. The third section of the report discusses the measures that can be used to characterize the distributional effects of tax changes.",
      "type": "CRS Report",
      "typeId": "REPORT",
      "active": false,
      "formats": [
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          "format": "PDF",
          "filename": "files/20041213_RL32693_f1984b177bf9ae3010380353f4bb3037515df5b0.pdf"
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          "format": "HTML",
          "filename": "files/20041213_RL32693_f1984b177bf9ae3010380353f4bb3037515df5b0.html"
        }
      ],
      "topics": [
        {
          "source": "LIV",
          "id": "Tax incidence",
          "name": "Tax incidence"
        },
        {
          "source": "LIV",
          "id": "Income tax",
          "name": "Income tax"
        },
        {
          "source": "LIV",
          "id": "Tax policy",
          "name": "Tax policy"
        },
        {
          "source": "LIV",
          "id": "Taxation",
          "name": "Taxation"
        },
        {
          "source": "LIV",
          "id": "Tax administration",
          "name": "Tax administration"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Economic Policy"
  ]
}