We document bunching at tax kinks using a panel of 258 million income tax returns in the United States from 1996 to 2014. During this period, bunching grew by 700%. While most bunchers are self-employed, a substantial number of wage earners also bunch by misreporting income. The vast majority of bunching occurs at kinks maximizing tax credits, particularly at the kink that maximizes taxpayer refunds. Many taxpayers follow the refund-maximizing kink from year to year, selectively maximizing the appropriate tax credit(s). We argue that this behavior is incompatible with recently developed methods for identifying elasticities via bunching patterns.

中文翻译：

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最大限度地增加税收抵免：来自美国税表中的扭结的证据

我们使用 1996 年至 2014 年在美国的 2.58 亿份所得税申报表记录了税收问题的聚集。在此期间，聚集增长了 700%。虽然大多数打工者是个体经营者，但相当多的工薪阶层也因误报收入而聚集在一起。绝大多数聚集发生在最大化税收抵免的扭结处，特别是在最大化纳税人退款的扭结处。许多纳税人年复一年地遵循退税最大化问题，有选择地最大化适当的税收抵免。我们认为这种行为与最近开发的通过聚束模式识别弹性的方法不兼容。