Research Report The Effect of Different Tax Calculators on the Supplemental Poverty Measure
Laura Wheaton, Katie Shantz
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Income taxes are an important component of the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) but are not reported on the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC). Instead, the Census Bureau uses a tax calculation program to calculate taxes for individuals and families in the CPS ASEC. In this paper, we compare the results of the Census Bureau’s tax model with results from three other tax models—TAXSIM, the Bakija model, and TRIM3. We find that the tax models produce similar results and the choice of tax model has little effect on the SPM poverty rate.
Research Areas Wealth and financial well-being Families Social safety net Taxes and budgets
Tags Poverty Family and household data Employment and income data Refundable tax credits Earned income tax credit Individual taxes
Policy Centers Income and Benefits Policy Center