Katie Genadek (Colorado; Google Scholar) presents Newly-Available Individual-Level U.S. Tax Data from 1969-1994 (with J. Trent Alexander (Michigan; Google Scholar), David Bleckley (Michigan), Jonathan Fisher (Washington Center for Equitable Growth; Google Scholar), Susan Hautaniemi Leonard (Michigan; Google Scholar) & Aristotle Magganas (UCLA)) at Georgetown today as part of its Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop hosted by Satterthwaite and Dayanand Manoli: 

This paper describes a series of linkable individual-level data from late-twentieth century federal income tax returns. The full universe Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 1040 files from 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, and 1994 were held at the Census Bureau since originally being deliv ered by the IRS shortly after each year’s tax returns were processed. The data were recently made usa ble for research, and they are now available for request through the Census Bureau’s restricted data re search program. This paper discusses the provenance and composition of the files, assesses the cover age and quality of the data, and discussed potential uses of the data for research.

Conclusion
IRS Form 1040 microdata from 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, and 1994 offer researchers hun dreds of millions of longitudinally-linkable, de-identified individual records, providing new potential for innovative discoveries on the social and economic issues of late-20th century American life. Efforts by the Census Bureau to add value through data linkage and geocoding have developed research-ready datasets, facilitating longitudinal research at the individual level, with granular geographies, and with the potential to link these files to other administrative records and survey data. We have determined that these data are nearly complete extracts of all tax returns filed in these years. While the number of returns in a given year is up to 5% less than published counts, this difference does not seem to originate from a particular geography, income level, or age group. These data are the most complete and accurate set of individual tax records available to researchers, and efforts by the Census Bureau and IRS have created a new opportunity to access these rich and important datasets.