Distribution of Federal Taxes
- Working Paper
Current Work on the Distributional Analysis of Household Income Resulting From Policy Changes: Working Paper 2022-09
This paper introduces a standardized framework to analyze how policy changes alter the distribution of household income to complement CBO’s analyses of policy changes’ budgetary and economic effects.
- Report
The Distribution of Household Income, 2019
CBO regularly analyzes the distribution of income in the United States and how it has changed over time. This report presents the distributions of household income, means-tested transfers, and federal taxes between 1979 and 2019.
- Presentation
How CBO Analyzes the Distribution of Household Income, Means-Tested Transfers, and Taxes
Presentation by Bilal Habib, an analyst in CBO’s Tax Analysis Division, to the Committee on National Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
- Report
The Distribution of Major Tax Expenditures in 2019
CBO examined how the benefits from major tax expenditures in the individual income tax and payroll tax systems were distributed among households in different income groups in 2019.
- Working Paper
How Changes in the Distribution of Earnings Affect the Federal Deficit: Working Paper 2021-12
This paper examines how the federal budget deficit would have differed in 2018 under four scenarios that vary the distribution of labor earnings while leaving aggregate earnings unchanged.
- Presentation
How CBO Adjusts for Underreporting of Means-Tested Transfers in Its Distributional Analyses
Presentation by Bilal Habib, an analyst in CBO’s Tax Analysis Division, at the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2021 Consumption Symposium.
- Working Paper
Distributional Effects of Reducing Carbon Dioxide Emissions With a Carbon Tax: Working Paper 2021-11
This paper describes CBO’s method for measuring the distributional effects of a tax on carbon emissions and the agency’s rationale for choosing that method, while also comparing it with CBO’s prior method and methods used by other researchers.
- Report
The Distribution of Household Income, 2018
In 2018, average household income after accounting for means-tested transfers and federal taxes was $37,700 among households in the lowest quintile and $243,900 among households in the highest quintile.
- Working Paper
Revisiting the Extent to Which Payroll Taxes Are Passed Through to Employees: Working Paper 2021-06
This working paper combines theory and existing empirical evidence to revisit the extent to which payroll taxes are passed through to employees. The estimates rely on stylized models and are complemented by a discussion of the empirical literature on payroll tax incidence.
- Report
The Distribution of Household Income, 2017
In 2017, average household income before accounting for means-tested transfers and federal taxes was $21,300 for the lowest quintile and $309,400 for the highest quintile. After transfers and taxes, those averages were $35,900 and $229,700.