This paper examines the effect of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 on the level of capital gains realizations and tax revenue under a variety of behavioral assumptions. Independent investigations by Feldstein, Slemrod, and Yitzhaki, the Department of Treasury. Lindsey, Auten and Clotfelter, and...

This paper examines how the tax simulation method can be extended to incorporate nonlinear budget constraints and nonstandard economic behavior. We simulate the effect of extending the charitable deduction to nonitemizers and study the effect of alternative "floors". The specific simulations...

The Tax Reform Act of 1969 included a provision intended to set at 50 percent the tax rate on all personal service income above the 50 percent bracket amount. The current law fails to meet this objective for the vast majority of these taxpayers. This paper explains why the current law is...

This paper considers the impact of federal deductibility on the level and composition of state and local taxes. It also considers the importance of deductibility in determining the vote of state Congressional delegations on the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Particular emphasis should be placed on the...

The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 mandated the most substantial reduction in personal income tax rates since the tax cuts of 1964. The rate reductions stimulated debates about the responsiveness of taxpayers to tax rates and incentives, the magnitude of the foregone revenue, and the...

The idea that marginal tax rates and tax revenue may be inversely related is at least as old as Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. The emergence of the "Laffer Curve" in the modern public debate on the subject has rekindled interestin this idea. The present paper uses data from the 1982 tax rate...

This paper examines the effect of capital gains tax rates on the level of capital gains realizations and the resulting amount of tax revenues. It concludes that capital gains tax revenues are maximized at a rate at the current 20 percent rate or lower, with a central estimate of 16 percent. Some...

The abolition of the favorable tax treatment of long term capital gains forced investors to reassess traditional year-end trading strategies used to manage tax liabilities. This study compares with year-end trading behavior in previous years with that observed at the end of 1986. Traditional...

The recent proposal for tax reform developed by the Department of the Treasury suggests dramatic changes in the structure of the personal income tax. One likely side effect of the changes will be a significant adverse impact on the level of charitable contributions by individuals.This paper...

The Maximum Tax on Personal Service Income was intended to reduce the maximum marginal tax rate on earned income to 50 percent. In general it did not achieve this result, although it did lower marginal tax rates on both earned and unearned income. This paper considers the effect of different tax...