Taxpayers routinely have too much income tax withheld. Of the 126 million tax returns the IRS processed through April 17, 2015, almost three-quarters resulted in a refund. The average refund was $2,711 with higher average refunds going to the earliest filers.
The Statistics of Income (SOI) Division of IRS prepares a publicly available file, the Public Use File, from its annual sample of income tax returns. The PUF is a critical data source for tax policy analysis. To insure taxpayer confidentiality, SOI applies disclosure avoidance procedures to the...
Errors in the formulas for computing payroll tax for the self-employed result in their paying less payroll taxes than workers with the same earnings. All self-employed workers benefit from these errors, but those with high earnings benefit disproportionately. A provision in Ways and Means...
This paper evaluates six options to achieve across-the-board reductions to a group of major exclusions and deductions in the income tax: (1) limiting their tax benefit to a maximum percentage of income, (2) imposing a fixed dollar cap, (3) reducing them by fixed-percentage amount, (4) limiting...
Most People Receive Refunds at Tax Time
Taxpayers routinely have too much income tax withheld. Of the 126 million tax returns the IRS processed through April 17, 2015, almost three-quarters resulted in a refund. The average refund was $2,711 with higher average refunds going to the earliest filers.
New Resources for Microdata-Based Tax Analysis
The Statistics of Income (SOI) Division of IRS prepares a publicly available file, the Public Use File, from its annual sample of income tax returns. The PUF is a critical data source for tax policy analysis. To insure taxpayer confidentiality, SOI applies disclosure avoidance procedures to the...
Costly Error in Payroll Tax Computation for the Self-Employed
Errors in the formulas for computing payroll tax for the self-employed result in their paying less payroll taxes than workers with the same earnings. All self-employed workers benefit from these errors, but those with high earnings benefit disproportionately. A provision in Ways and Means...
Evaluating Broad-Based Approaches for Limiting Tax Expenditures
This paper evaluates six options to achieve across-the-board reductions to a group of major exclusions and deductions in the income tax: (1) limiting their tax benefit to a maximum percentage of income, (2) imposing a fixed dollar cap, (3) reducing them by fixed-percentage amount, (4) limiting...