Description/Abstract
This paper investigates the effect of entrepreneurs’ personal income tax situations on their capital investment decisions. We examine the income tax returns of a sample of sole proprietors before and after the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and determine how the substantial reductions in marginal tax rates for the relatively affluent associated with that law affected their decisions to invest in physical capital. We find that individual income taxes exert a statistically and quantitatively significant influence on investment decisions. In our sample, a 5 percentage point increase in marginal tax rates would reduce the proportion of entrepreneurs who make new capital investments by 10.4 percent, and decrease mean investment expenditures by 9.9 percent.
Document Type
Working Paper
Date
7-1998
Language
English
Series
Metropolitan Studies Program Series
Acknowledgements
We thank Esther Gray, Ann Wicks, and Jodi Woodson for their aid in preparing the manuscript. We are grateful to Lowell Dworin, Bo Honoré, Joel Slemrod, and attendees at both the April 1997 pre-conference and October 1997 conference for useful suggestions.
Disciplines
Economic Policy | Economics | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration | Public Policy
ISSN
0732 507X
Recommended Citation
Carroll, Robert; Holtz-Eakin, Douglas; Rider, Mark; and Rosen, Harvey, "Entrepreneurs, Income Taxes, and Investment" (1998). Center for Policy Research. 441.
https://surface.syr.edu/cpr/441
Source
Local Input
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Included in
Economic Policy Commons, Economics Commons, Public Policy Commons
Additional Information
Metropolitan studies program series occasional paper no.192