A Tale of Two Bases: Progressive Taxation of Capital and Labor Income

Macroeconomic models routinely abstract simultaneously from two features of the United States federal tax code: the joint taxation of ordinary capital and labor income, and the special taxation of preferential capital income. In this paper we argue that this abstraction omits a `portfolio-effect' mechanism where endogenous changes to the ordinary-preferential composition of households' capital income influence individuals' optimal labor and saving decisions through its impact on their effective marginal tax rates. We demonstrate the quantitative importance of this tax detail by simulating provisions from the recently enacted “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” using a heterogeneous-agent overlapping generations framework

Modeling the Internal Revenue Code in a heterogeneous-agent framework: An application to TCJA

Macroeconomic models used for tax policy analysis often simultaneously abstract from two features of the US tax code: special tax treatment for preferential capital income, and the joint tax treatment of ordinary capital and labor income. In this paper, we explore the extent to which explicitly accounting for these tax details has macroeconomic implications within a heterogeneous-agent model. We do this by expanding the Moore and Pecoraro (2018) overlapping generations model to include distinct corporate and non-corporate firms so that the business income distributed to households can be separated into ordinary and preferred capital income. Household income tax treatment is then determined by an internal tax calculator that fully accounts for interaction among income bases while conditioning on idiosyncratic household characteristics. Relative to a conventional approach where household income taxation is determined by independent labor and capital income tax functions that do not distinguish between ordinary and preferred capital income, we find that our innovations have implications for household behavior and economic aggregates - especially the tax consequences of changes to the returns to labor and capital - when analyzing a subset of tax provisions from the recently enacted “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”. Our findings imply that the abstracting from tax detail may come at the expense of correctly accounting for incentives and estimating macroeconomic responses to tax policy changes

Macroeconomic Implications of Modeling the Internal Revenue Code in a Heterogeneous-Agent Framework

Fiscal policy analysis in heterogeneous-agent models typically involves the use of smooth tax functions to approximate present tax law and proposed reforms. We argue that the tax detail omitted under this conventional approach has macroeconomic implications relevant for policy analysis. In this paper, we develop an alternative approach by embedding an internal tax calculator into a large-scale overlapping generations model that explicitly models key provisions in the Internal Revenue Code applied to labor income. While both approaches generate similar policy-induced patterns of economic activity, we find that the similarities mask differences in key economic aggregates and welfare due to variation in the underlying distribution of household labor supply responses. Absent sufficient tax detail, analysis of specific policy changes - particularly those involving large, discrete effects on a relatively small group of households - using heterogeneous-agent models can be unreliable

Dynamic Scoring: An Assessment of Fiscal Closing Assumptions

Analysis of fiscal policy changes using general equilibrium models with forward-looking agents typically requires the modeler to assume a counterfactual adjustment to some fiscal instrument in order to achieve the debt sustainability implied by the government's intertemporal budget constraint. Since the fiscal instrument chosen to close the model can induce economic behavior unrelated to the policy change in models where Ricardian Equivalence does not hold, noise may be introduced into the analysis. In this paper we use such an overlapping generations framework to examine the impact of alternative fiscal closing assumptions on projected changes to economic aggregates over the ten-year `budget window' following a change in tax policy, assessing the extent to which the noise associated with a particular fiscal instrument can be mitigated. We find that while quantitative differences in projected macroeconomic activity can be observed across alternative fiscal instruments, these differences tend to shrink as the date that fiscal instruments begin to adjust is delayed into the future. Since the particular fiscal instrument chosen to achieve debt sustainability can then become relatively unimportant, the reliability of policy analysis obtained using this class of models may be improved

Macroeconomic Implications of Modeling the Internal Revenue Code in a Heterogeneous-Agent Framework

Fiscal policy analysis in heterogeneous-agent models typically involves the use of smooth tax functions to approximate present tax law and proposed reforms. We argue that the tax detail omitted under this conventional approach has macroeconomic implications relevant for policy analysis. In this paper, we develop an alternative approach by embedding an internal tax calculator into a large-scale overlapping generations model that explicitly models key provisions in the Internal Revenue Code applied to labor income. While both approaches generate similar policy-induced patterns of economic activity, we find that the similarities mask differences in key economic aggregates and welfare due to variation in the underlying distribution of household labor supply responses. Absent sufficient tax detail, analysis of specific policy changes - particularly those involving large, discrete effects on a relatively small group of households - using heterogeneous-agent models can be unreliable

Macroeconomic Implications of Modeling the Internal Revenue Code in a Heterogeneous-Agent Framework

Fiscal policy analysis in heterogeneous-agent models typically involves the use of smooth tax functions to approximate complex present tax law and proposed reforms. In this paper, we explore the extent to which the tax detail omitted under this conventional approach has macroeconomic implications relevant for policy analysis. To do this, we develop an alternative approach by embedding an internal tax calculator into a large-scale overlapping generations model that, while conditioning on idiosyncratic household characteristics, explicitly models key provisions in the Internal Revenue Code applied to labor income. We find that for a comparative-static steady state analysis of a given tax policy change, both approaches generate similar policy-induced patterns of macroeconomic activity despite variation in the underlying patterns of household tax-preferred consumption and labor supply behavior. However, this variation in underlying behavior is associated with significant quantitative and qualitative differences in macroeconomic aggregates along the transition path immediately following a policy change. Consequentially, although the use of unconditional smooth tax functions may be a reasonable modeling simplification for steady state analysis of tax policy, caution should be taken for their use in transition path analysis within heterogeneous-agent models

Dynamic Scoring: An Assessment of Fiscal Closing Assumptions

Analysis of fiscal policy changes using general equilibrium models with forward-looking agents typically requires the modeler to assume a counterfactual adjustment to some fiscal instrument in order to achieve the debt sustainability implied by the government's intertemporal budget constraint. Since the fiscal instrument chosen to close the model can induce economic behavior unrelated to the policy change in models where Ricardian Equivalence does not hold, noise may be introduced into the analysis. In this paper we use such an overlapping generations framework to examine the impact of alternative fiscal closing assumptions on projected changes to economic aggregates over the ten-year `budget window' following a change in tax policy, assessing the extent to which the noise associated with a particular fiscal instrument can be mitigated. We find that while quantitative differences in projected macroeconomic activity can be observed across alternative fiscal instruments, these differences tend to shrink as the date that fiscal instruments begin to adjust is delayed into the future. Since the particular fiscal instrument chosen to achieve debt sustainability can then become relatively unimportant, the reliability of policy analysis obtained using this class of models may be improved

A Tale of Two Bases: Progressive Taxation of Capital and Labor Income

Macroeconomic models routinely abstract simultaneously from two features of the United States federal tax code: the joint taxation of ordinary capital and labor income, and the special taxation of preferential capital income. In this paper we argue that this abstraction omits a `portfolio-effect' mechanism where endogenous changes to the ordinary-preferential composition of households' capital income influence individuals' optimal labor and saving decisions through its impact on their effective marginal tax rates. We demonstrate the quantitative importance of this tax detail by simulating provisions from the recently enacted “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” using a heterogeneous-agent overlapping generations framework

Macroeconomic Implications of Modeling the Internal Revenue Code in a Heterogeneous-Agent Framework

Fiscal policy analysis in heterogeneous-agent models typically involves the use of smooth tax functions to approximate complex present tax law and proposed reforms. In this paper, we explore the extent to which the tax detail omitted under this conventional approach has macroeconomic implications relevant for policy analysis. To do this, we develop an alternative approach by embedding an internal tax calculator into a large-scale overlapping generations model that, while conditioning on idiosyncratic household characteristics, explicitly models key provisions in the Internal Revenue Code applied to labor income. We find that for a comparative-static steady state analysis of a given tax policy change, both approaches generate similar policy-induced patterns of macroeconomic activity despite variation in the underlying patterns of household tax-preferred consumption and labor supply behavior. However, this variation in underlying behavior is associated with significant quantitative and qualitative differences in macroeconomic aggregates along the transition path immediately following a policy change. Consequentially, although the use of unconditional smooth tax functions may be a reasonable modeling simplification for steady state analysis of tax policy, caution should be taken for their use in transition path analysis within heterogeneous-agent models

Quantitative Analysis of a Wealth Tax for the United States: Exclusions and Expenditures

We use an overlapping generations model with endogenous avoidance and rich tax detail to quantitatively analyze two major issues in the design of a wealth tax for the United States: the provision of exclusions for certain housing and business equity, and the range of government expenditure options allowed for by additional revenues. First, we find that while the provision of an exclusion for owner-occupied housing results in quantitatively insignificant macroeconomic and budgetary effects, the provision of an exclusion for privately-held noncorporate business equity results in a shift of productive activity towards that sector and undermines the revenue-raising potential of the tax. Second, we find that the macroeconomic effects of a given wealth tax regime can vary from contractionary to expansionary depending on the type of expenditures that are assumed to be financed by the additional revenues