TY  - JOUR
AU  - Feenberg,Daniel R.
AU  - Mitrusi,Andrew W.
AU  - Poterba,James M.
TI  - Distributional Effects of Adopting a National Retail Sales Tax
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5885
PY  - 1997
Y2  - January 1997
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5885
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5885.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Daniel R. Feenberg
National Bureau of Economic Research
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/588-0343
Fax: 617/868-2742
E-Mail: feenberg@nber.org

James M. Poterba
Department of Economics
MIT, E52-350
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA  02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-6673
Fax: 617/258-7804
E-Mail: poterba@nber.org
M1  - published as Daniel R. Feenberg, Andrew W. Mitrusi, James M. Poterba. "Distributional Effects of Adopting a National Retail Sales Tax," in James M. Poterba, editor, "Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 11" MIT Press (1997)

M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1997-08-01
AB  - This paper describes a new household-level data file based on merged information from the IRS Individual Tax File, the Current Population Survey, the National Medical Expenditure Survey, and the Consumer Expenditure Survey.  This new file includes descriptive data on household income as well as consumption.  The data file can be linked to the NBER TAXSIM program and used to evaluate the distributional effects of changing the federal income tax code, as well as the distributional effects of replacing the individual income tax with a consumption tax.  We use this data file to analyze the long-run distributional effects of adopting a national retail sales tax that raises enough revenue to replace the current federal individual income tax and corporation income tax, as well as federal estate and gift taxes.  Our results highlight the sensitivity of the change in distributional burdens to provisions such as lump sum transfers, sometimes called 'demogrants,' the retail sales tax plan, and to the choice between income and consumption as a basis for categorizing households in distribution tables.
ER  -