Expand TAXID to all ACS years

USA
1

Hello,

May I have your help expanding TAXID and other TAXSIM inputs from the years where it is currently available (2009-19) to all ACS years? The documentation (https://usa.ipums.org/usa-action/variables/TAXID#description_section) says the methods are covered in a Census working paper, but the description there is very limited. If code is available, I’d love to work from that, and ideally produce something that could be used to update the IPUMS USA database as well.

Thanks!

John

2

Thank you for letting us know about your interest in the TAXSIM variables. IPUMS does not create these variables; we integrate them into the IPUMS USA database from the Census Bureau Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) data files (released separately from the rest of the ACS). Currently, we only offer the 2009-2019 data, but we plan to include the recently released 2021-2022 SPM data for ACS in the future.

Note that the ACS does not collect any information on a household’s tax obligations or tax filing. Instead, the Census Bureau uses the NBER’s TAXSIM program to create these variables. There are several issues which make running TAXSIM using ACS data challenging (addressed on page 9 of Fox, Glassman, and Pacas):

  • Tax filing units need to be formed. This is challenging in the ACS due to the minimal relationship data available in the survey. Using relationship criteria developed by IPUMS, parental and spousal identifiers were created in order to identify the detailed familial relationships needed to form tax units (e.g., FAMUNIT and SUBFAM).
  • There is no information in the ACS about whether or not the respondent filed taxes.
  • There are a number of income variables that TAXSIM asks for which are not available in the ACS (including mortgage deductions and unemployment income).

I will also note that the Current Population Survey’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC; accessible using IPUMS CPS) reports SPM variables each year and that the CPS is the recommended source for national poverty estimates. We are collaborating with Columbia’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy to make historical SPM variables available in the CPS prior to 2009. Without more information on your interest in these variables, I am not sure if the CPS is a suitable substitute for the ACS variables in your use case.

3

Thanks, Ivan -

This is an ACS-only project. Thanks for the lead on the Census Bureau update. I found more documentation there and a new paper from Glassman and Wilson. The documentation says that the tax IDs were corrected, which probably means all the tax variables have been updated for 2009-19, not just 2021-22. I will try emailing the authors again for their code - expect it’ll be hard to extend their work based on the descriptions in their papers alone!

Thanks again,

John

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