Graphic: Putting the Stimulusâ Tax Provisions on the Map
A householdâs earnings is the main factor in determining how much â if any â an individual will gain through the stimulus billâs top three tax cuts, but income isnât distributed evenly around the country. Weâve crunched the numbers to show where the Making Work Pay tax credit and changes to the Alternative Minimum Tax and Child Tax Credit will have the biggest impact.
A larger size of this graphic can be seen here
Where did we get the numbers? The Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (the sister organization of the left-of-center group, Citizens for Tax Justice) used Internal Revenue Service data about incomes and historic tax payments to build a computer model that predicts the effect of these tax provisions on each state. We couldn't find another think tank that analyzes tax policy in quite this way, but economists from both sides of the ideological spectrum say these estimates seem fair.
As the bill emerged from the conference committee, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the nationwide impact of tax provisions. ITEP adjusted their estimates for consistency with the CBOâs total, then gave us those statewide numbers. We divided those by the Census Bureau's 2008 projections of the state's populations to show the per capita impact.
