Troiano, Ugo. <br/><br/>
Do Taxes Increase Economic Inequality? A Comparative Study Based on the State Personal Income Tax / 
Ugo Troiano. 
 - Cambridge, Mass.  National Bureau of Economic Research  2017. 
 - 1 online resource:  illustrations (black and white); 
 - NBER working paper series  no. w24175 .
 - Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research)  no. w24175. .
<br/><br/> December 2017. 
<br/><br/> I present new quasi-experimental evidence on the relationship between tax policies and the distribution of income. I focus on the twentieth century United States, and on the personal income tax, since its inception. I study three major policy events that, as the existing literature shows, significantly raised the revenues from the income tax: the introduction of the state personal income tax, the introduction of tax withholding together with third-party reporting, and the intergovernmental agreements between the federal and state governments to coordinate tax auditing efforts. All the three policies were introduced in a staggered fashion and increased tax revenues, but had different fiscal consequences. Despite this, I find that income inequality raised after all the tax policy events. The result is robust to different measures of economic inequality and econometric specifications. 
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