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How have Black and White taxpayers' shares of federal income tax changed 2010 to 2023?
Executive Summary
The supplied materials collectively claim that Black and White taxpayers’ shares of federal individual income tax changed between 2010 and 2023, driven largely by differences in income, wealth, and how tax provisions (capital gains, mortgage deductions, credits) interact with those differences. Multiple 2024–2025 analyses conclude the tax system can exacerbate racial wealth gaps, but none of the supplied summaries provides a single, direct time series quantifying the precise change in tax-share percentages for Black versus White taxpayers over 2010–2023; instead, the sources offer decomposition, policy simulation, and descriptive results that point to persistent disparities [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6].
1. What claimants say—and what they don’t show with a single number that convinces
The materials assert that racial disparities in who pays federal income tax have shifted from 2010 to 2023, attributing changes to income composition, capital income concentration among White taxpayers, and targeted credits among Black taxpayers. The Treasury and Tax Policy Center summaries stress that White families capture a large share of capital-gains tax benefits, while Black and Latine families rely more on credits like the EITC and CTC; those claims are documented in policy-focused reports and studies from 2024 and early 2025 that analyze distributional mechanisms [2] [3] [4]. However, none of the supplied summaries presents a clear year-by-year series showing the share of total federal income tax paid by self-identified Black versus White taxpayers for each year 2010–2023, so the headline claim lacks a single, directly cited quantitative trajectory in these excerpts [1] [6].
2. Where the evidence is strongest: mechanism and distributional analysis
The strongest, most consistent evidence in the analyses is mechanistic: tax code features—preferential rates on capital gains and deductions for mortgage interest—disproportionately benefit households with greater wealth and capital income, which are disproportionately White, while refundable and income-targeted credits preferentially reduce tax liabilities for lower-income households, where Black and Latine taxpayers are overrepresented. Multiple 2024 pieces synthesize microdata and modeling to show those patterns and simulate reforms that would shift burdens or benefits across groups; these sources converge on the conclusion that the tax code amplifies existing wealth disparities even if it is formally race-neutral [2] [3] [5].
3. Where the evidence is weakest: direct change in tax-share percentages 2010–2023
The major empirical gap across the supplied materials is the absence of a straightforward trend estimate: the summaries repeatedly note that race is not recorded on tax returns and that analyses therefore rely on surveys or modeling to map race to tax units, but the provided excerpts do not include a clean, comparable estimate of Black and White shares of federal individual income tax in 2010 and in 2023 to show the delta. The SOI historic tables and related data sources are referenced as containing underlying tax statistics, and one of the analyses notes the need to extract and cross-tabulate those files for a definitive answer, highlighting that the claim of a changed share is plausible and consistent with distributional work but not fully documented in the excerpts provided [6] [1] [7].
4. Conflicting signals and alternative interpretations worth noting
Some of the supplied analyses emphasize that White tax units face higher average tax rates because average incomes are higher and the income tax is progressive, while others point out that at low incomes Black units may face lower rates due to family composition and credit eligibility; both are true for different income strata. These nuances mean that aggregate shifts in tax shares could be driven by demographic changes, income growth concentrated among White households, or policy changes like the TCJA of 2017—each mechanism would imply different policy remedies. The studies span publication dates from mid‑2024 through early 2025 and therefore reflect post‑TCJA modeling and recent wealth data, but they diverge on whether observed changes represent structural shifts or short‑term policy artifacts [5] [3].
5. Bottom line and what a definitive answer would require next
The available analyses collectively support the claim that racial differences in who benefits from and who pays federal income tax persisted and in some respects widened from 2010 to 2023, driven by wealth concentration, capital income treatment, and targeted refundable credits; however, the materials do not provide a single, directly measured time series of Black and White shares of federal income tax for 2010 versus 2023. To produce a definitive quantitative change, researchers must link IRS/SOI tax records or high‑quality microsimulation outputs to demographic identifiers via surveys or administrative matching, report the share of total federal individual income tax paid by race in both years, and document methodological choices (sampling, imputation, treatment of capital income). The cited 2024–2025 studies chart the mechanisms and simulate reforms, but a final numeric accounting remains to be assembled from the underlying SOI and household microdata [1] [2] [6].