文档介绍：原文:
THE DISTRIBUTION OF PAYROLL AND
E TAX BURDENS, 1979-1999
Andrew Mitrusi
James Poterba
Working Paper 7707
ers/w7707
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
May 2000
1. Federal e and Payroll Tax Changes, 1979-1999
There have been four major legislative changes in the federal personal e tax code in the last two decades. The payroll tax has also been changed several times, but the changes have been less dramatic than those in the e tax code. This section summarizes these legislative changes.
Federal e Tax Changes, 1979-1999
There were four major federal e tax reforms during the 1979-1999 period. These were the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (ERTA), the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86), the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 (OBRA93), and the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 (TRA97). These reforms are described in detail elsewhere, for example Steuerle (1992), so with the exception of TRA97, we will not provide an in-depth summary.
ERTA significantly reduced personal e taxes across-the-board. It incorporated a three-year period of tax reduction, with marginal rates on all but the highest e taxpayers declining substantially during the 1981-1984 period. The top marginal tax rate on earned e was 50 percent before as well as after ERTA, but the legislation reduced the top marginal rate on unearned e from 70 percent to 50 percent beginning in 1981. This reform also reduced the top statutory marginal tax rate on long-term capital gains from 28 percent to 20 percent. We consider tax burdens in 1984 in our analysis below, because by 1984 the ERTA reforms were fully effective.
TRA86 continued the reduction in top marginal tax rates that had been part of ERTA, but it also eliminated the capital gains tax preference for most taxpayers. For taxpayers at the highest e levels, TRA86 reduced marginal tax rates from 50 percent in 1986, to 39 percent in 1987 and to 28 percent in 1988. TRA86 introduced a hump-shap