Group Equity and Implicit Discrimination in Tax Systems

Abstract

I address some issues in measuring group equity and implicit discrimination and in assessing their role in the evaluation of tax systems, focusing on racial equity in the United States. I argue that group inequity should be judged relative to other accepted objectives of the tax system it may facilitate and stress the importance of having accurate measures of well-being. Finally, I present a decomposition of the difference in groups’ average tax rates into measures of the overall progressivity, group differences in average income, and a set of income-group-specific measures of horizontal group tax differences.