Tax elasticities on giving

[jjbergdo]

Hey everyone. I am writing on behalf of the research team at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy with a request. We are developing a white paper on the effects of certain proposed policy changes to both charitable giving and overall tax revenue. Prior literature on this has generally assumed a single elasticity for the price of giving, but we have the ability, through use of the Philanthropy Panel Study (PPS), part of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), to calculate more specific elasticities for income brackets and itemizing status. We hope to apply these different elasticities to the Tax Calculator, so that when we run our policy changes (see the open issue here: https://github.com/open-source-economics/Tax-Calculator/issues/1236) we have a more accurate and refined estimate of the effect on charitable giving and revenue.

In particular, we are hoping to apply elasticities of charitable giving with respect to the marginal tax rate on charitable giving, varying by both itemizing status and across the income categories. Our current specifications use imputed AGI ranges of <$20k, $20k-$50k, $50k-$100k, and $100k+. These can be easily adjusted though (with the exception that super-high incomes are not reliably measured in the PSID). We talked to @matthjensen about gaining access to the puf.csv file for the purpose of imputing charitable deductions for non-filers based on this work with the PSID.

We would greatly appreciate any help in regards to this request.

[MattHJensen]

@jjbergdo, could you repost this issue in tax-calculator? Once I send you more info on the puf.csv file, we'll use this repo to discuss imputations.

[jjbergdo]

@MattHJensen I can do that. Thanks.

[MattHJensen]

Thanks. Closing here.