Piketty's Numbers Don't Add Up

Ignoring dramatic changes in tax rules since 1980 creates the false impression that income inequality is rising.

Click here to read the WSJ article by Martin Feldstein. Excerpts: 

"his thesis rests on a false theory of how wealth evolves in a market economy, a flawed interpretation of U.S. income-tax data, and a misunderstanding of the current nature of household wealth."

"the rate of return on capital—the extra income that results from investing an additional dollar in plant and equipment—exceeds the rate of growth of the economy. He then jumps to the false conclusion that this difference between the rate of return and the rate of growth leads through time to an ever-increasing inequality of wealth and of income unless the process is interrupted by depression, war or confiscatory taxation."

"His conclusion about ever-increasing inequality could be correct if people lived forever."

"They pass on some of their wealth to the next generation. But the cumulative effect of such bequests is diluted by the combination of existing estate taxes and the number of children and grandchildren who share the bequests."

"The result is that total wealth grows over time roughly in proportion to total income."

"Since 1960, the Federal Reserve flow-of-funds data report that real total household wealth in the U.S. has grown at 3.2% a year while the real total personal income calculated by the Department of Commerce grew at 3.3%."

"In 1981 the top tax rate on interest, dividends and other investment income was reduced to 50% from 70%, nearly doubling the after-tax share that owners of taxable capital income could keep. That rate reduction thus provided a strong incentive to shift assets from low-yielding, tax-exempt investments like municipal bonds to higher yielding taxable investments. The tax data therefore signaled an increase in measured income inequality even though there was no change in real inequality."

"The Tax Reform Act of 1986 lowered the top rate on all income to 28% from 50%. That reinforced the incentive to raise the taxable yield on portfolio investments. It also increased other forms of taxable income by encouraging more work, by causing more income to be paid as taxable salaries rather than as fringe benefits and deferred compensation, and by reducing the use of deductions and exclusions. 

The 1986 tax reform also repealed the General Utilities doctrine, a provision that had encouraged high-income individuals to run their business and professional activities as Subchapter C corporations, which were taxed at a lower rate than their personal income. This corporate income of professionals and small businesses did not appear in the income-tax data that Mr. Piketty studied. 

The repeal of the General Utilities doctrine and the decline in the top personal tax rate to less than the corporate rate caused high-income taxpayers to shift their business income out of taxable corporations and onto their personal tax returns."

"These changes in taxpayer behavior substantially increased the amount of income included on the returns of high-income individuals. This creates the false impression of a sharp rise in the incomes of high-income taxpayers even though there was only a change in the legal form of that income."

"Mr. Piketty's practice of comparing the incomes of top earners with total national income has another flaw. National income excludes the value of government transfer payments including Social Security, health benefits and food stamps that are a large and growing part of the personal incomes of low- and middle-income households."

"Finally, Mr. Piketty's use of estate-tax data to explore what he sees as the increasing inequality of wealth is problematic. In part, this is because of changes in estate and gift-tax rules, but more fundamentally because bequeathable assets are only a small part of the wealth that most individuals have for their retirement years. That wealth includes the present actuarial value of Social Security and retiree health benefits, and the income that will flow from employer-provided pensions."