Tax return data are increasingly the standard for tracking income statistics in the United States. However, these data have traditionally been limited by their inability to capture non-filers and to identify members of separate tax units living in the same household. We overcome these obstacles...

Using a panel of tax data, we follow the earnings of individuals over business cycles. Compared to prior recessions, the Covid policy response and recovery were far more progressive. Among workers starting in the bottom quintile, median real earnings including fiscal relief increased 66 percent...

This paper presents new estimates of the level and persistence of poverty among U.S. households since the Great Recession. We build annual household data files using U.S. income tax filings between 2007 and 2018. These data allow us to track individuals over time and measure how tax policies...

The COVID-19 pandemic caused regressive income declines, but also led to progressive policy responses. Using administrative U.S. tax data, which are a near-universal panel dataset that can track income changes over time, we consider the distribution of annual income declines during the COVID-19...

Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits were a central part of the social safety net during the Covid-19 recession. UI benefits, however, are severely understated in surveys. Using administrative tax data, we find that over half of UI benefits were missed in major survey data, with a greater...