Essays on Responses to Income Taxation in the United States

ederal income taxes on individual income in the United States raised over ;In the first chapter of this dissertation, I estimate the responsive of capital gains realizations and ordinary income in the United States to changes in marginal tax rates on both types of income. I use a large non-public panel of federal income tax returns from 1997-2007, and find two key results, though both are sensitive to a variety of specification decisions. First, capital gains respond to both the capital gains tax rate and the ordinary income tax rate. Second, I find mixed evidence that ordinary income responds to the ordinary income tax rate and the long-term capital gains tax rate. These results suggest cross-tax responses between these two bases are important, and should not be ignored when estimating taxpayer responses in the United States.;The second chapter of this dissertation investigates how taxpayers respond to changes within the tax schedule. One way taxpayers may respond is by bunching at kink points in the tax schedule to avoid high marginal tax rates. We study this phenomenon using over 500 million federal individual income tax returns in the United States from 1996 to 2014. Though most kinks do not cause statistically discernible bunching, we present new evidence documenting the emergence and rapid rise of bunching at the second Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) kink and the Child Tax Credit refundability plateau, strong responses to the temporary Making Work Pay Tax Credit, and weak responses at three statutory kinks. Consistent with prior research, we also observe bunching at the first kink in the EITC schedule. The majority of bunchers are self-employed, though we find significant bunching among wage earners in recent years. Substantial bunching responses occur only at kinks that maximize tax credits, and the strongest response occurs at the unique point in the schedule that maximizes credits net of taxes owed.;The third chapter of this dissertation examines withdrawal patterns from traditional Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). In 2013, individuals age 60 or older held...