Self-Employment Income Reporting on Surveys
April 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-19
Abstract
We examine the relation between administrative income data and survey reports for self-employed and wage-earning respondents from 2000 - 2015. The self-employed report 40 percent more wages and self-employment income in the survey than in tax administrative records; this estimate nets out differences between these two sources that are also shared by wage-earners. We provide evidence that differential reporting incentives are an important explanation of the larger self-employed gap by exploiting a well-known artifact ' self-employed respondents exhibit substantial bunching at the
first EITC kink in their administrative records. We do not observe the same behavior in their survey responses even after accounting for survey measurement concerns.
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:
work census,
survey,
respondent,
earnings,
employed,
revenue,
discrepancy,
salary,
tax,
irs,
income survey,
filing,
earner,
survey income,
employment earnings,
taxpayer,
income data,
1040
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Internal Revenue Service,
Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Social Security Administration,
Current Population Survey,
Social Security,
Social Security Number,
Detailed Earnings Records,
Protected Identification Key,
Earned Income Tax Credit,
Census Bureau Disclosure Review Board,
Limited Liability Company,
ASEC,
Person Identification Validation System,
Census Numident,
SSA Numident,
Personally Identifiable Information,
Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement
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