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Putting a Face on America's Tax Returns

Who are the rich and poor in America today? Are they Wall Street investors, small business owners, working mothers or college students? These questions matter for tax policy. But too often tax debates ignore them, relying on false assumptions about “rich” and “poor” that don’t reflect the changing face of American taxpayers.

The Putting a Face on America’s Tax Returns project aims to examine these assumptions, and the redistributive “rich vs. poor” arguments that rely on them. By “putting a face” on sterile tax data, the Tax Foundation hopes to supplant abstract discussions of "class warfare" with concrete, detailed portraits of the taxpayers behind the numbers—leading to a more sensible debate over U.S. tax policy.

The project uses the Tax Foundation’s Individual Tax Model and Matched IRS/Census Database to study how tax policy changes affect taxpayers in different demographic, occupational, and regional groups. The model matches sterile IRS tax records to the rich demographic household records in the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey to paint a detailed portrait of taxpayers and their unique family situations. When matched with Census data, IRS tax returns take on the face of the ordinary families behind the numbers—helping improve the quality of America's tax policy debate.

Additional questions about the Putting a Face on America's Tax Returns project? Contact Bill Ahern at (202) 464-5101.

Publications from The Tax Foundation