Abstract Using longitudinal data from individual tax returns spanning different tax regimes and fixed-effects regression models that control for unobserved heterogeneity in savings tastes, we find that use of paid tax return preparers and the presence of a balance due to the IRS increase the probability of IRA participation. These results provide first-time evidence that preparers' role in the tax system extends beyond compliance issues to taxpayers' personal decisions such as savings, and reconfirm prior research results that framing bias widely impacts taxpayer decisions. We also find that segregating persistent and infrequent participants potentially explains conflicts in prior research regarding the impact of marginal tax rates on IRA participation, suggesting the importance of incorporating persistence in savings behavior in future research.
Frischmann et al. (Tue,) studied this question.