TY  - JOUR
AU  - Piketty,Thomas
AU  - Saez,Emmanuel
TI  - How Progressive is the U.S. Federal Tax System? A Historical and International Perspective
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12404
PY  - 2006
Y2  - August 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12404
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12404.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Thomas Piketty
Paris School of Economics
48 Boulevard Jourdan
75014 Paris, France
E-Mail: piketty@ens.fr

Emmanuel Saez
Department of Economics
University of California, Berkeley
530 Evans Hall #3880
Berkeley, CA 94720
Tel: 510/642-4631
Fax: 510/642-6615
E-Mail: saez@econ.berkeley.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2006-08-07
AB  - This paper provides estimates of federal tax rates by income groups in the United States since 1960, with special emphasis on very top income groups. We include individual and corporate income taxes, payroll taxes, and estate and gift taxes. The progressivity of the U.S. federal tax system at the top of the income distribution has declined dramatically since the 1960s. This dramatic drop in progressivity is due primarily to a drop in corporate taxes and in estate and gift taxes combined with a sharp change in the composition of top incomes away from capital income and toward labor income. The sharp drop in statutory top marginal individual income tax rates has contributed only moderately to the decline in tax progressivity. International comparisons confirm that is it critical to take into account other taxes than the individual income tax to properly assess the extent of overall tax progressivity, both for time trends and for cross-country comparisons. The pattern for the United Kingdom is similar to the US pattern. France had less progressive taxes than the US or UK in 1970 but has experienced an increase in tax progressivity and has now a more progressive tax system than the US or the UK.
ER  -