Tax Model File Documentation

US Individual Income Tax Public Use Sample Documentation

Source Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

This directory includes documentation for each of the (nearly) annual Tax Model Files. The Tax Model Files are public use samples of US Federal Individual Income Tax returns, with individual identifiers removed and the remaining data sufficiently rounded and blurred to prevent the identification of individual taxpayers. These have been issued since 1960, and are of special interest to researchers studying the income tax and the distribution of income. The files are poor in demographic information (no age, race or sex variables) but are rich in income information, especially for higher income taxpayers whose incomes are not likely to be accurately covered in survey data.

General Description Booklets

Each year a small booklet with a record layout and copies of the tax forms was issued by the SOI. These are available here as image only PDF files through 1994, then as PDF normal (searchable) format. These include information about disclosure avoidance techniques used in the file, tax forms showing the exact fields extracted and some summary statistics.

Text Files

Basic documentation for each file is available in text form. This is a subset of the General Description Booklets.

SAS programs

For some recent years SOI has supplied us with SAS programs that generate the PUF files. These are easily edited to read the same files.

Obtaining the data files

Research Associates and Faculty Fellows of the National Bureau of Economic Research should contact Daniel Feenberg to use the data on the NBER Cambridge Unix system.

Others may obtain the files from the SOI division of the IRS (202-376-0081) or (for the older files) from the National Archives (301-713-6640). You will have to sign a confidentiality agreement for files obtained from the SOI.

Note There were no public use files in 1961, 1963 and 1965.


Tax Year	Text Extract	GDB	(E-codes)	SAS
1960	1960.txt	1960.pdf	NA	NA
1961	No File
1962	1962.txt	1962.pdf	NA	NA
1963	No file
1964	1964.txt	1964.pdf	NA	NA
1965	No File
1966	1966.txt	1966.pdf	NA	NA
1967	1967.txt	1967.pdf	NA	NA
1968	1968.txt	1968.pdf	NA	NA
1969	1969.txt	1969.pdf	NA	NA
1970	1970.txt	1970.pdf	NA	NA
1971	1971.txt	1971.pdf	NA	NA
1972	1972.txt	1972.pdf	NA	NA
1973	1973.txt	1973.pdf	NA	NA
1974	1974.txt	1974.pdf	NA	NA
1975	1975.txt	1975.pdf	NA	NA
1976	1976.txt	1976.pdf	NA	NA
1977	1977.txt	1977.pdf	NA	NA
1978	1978.txt	1978.pdf	NA	NA
1979	1979.txt	1979.pdf	NA	NA
1980	1980.txt	1980.pdf	NA	NA
1981	1981.txt	1981.pdf	NA	NA
1982	1982.txt	1982.pdf	NA	NA
1983	1983.txt	1983.pdf	NA	NA
1984	1984.txt	1984.pdf	NA	NA
1985	1985.txt	1985.pdf	NA	NA
1986	1986.txt	1986.pdf	NA	NA
1987	1987.txt	1987.pdf	NA	NA
1988	1988.txt	1988.pdf	NA	NA
1989	1989.txt	1989.pdf	NA	NA
1990	1990.txt	1990.pdf	NA	NA
1991	1991.txt	1991.pdf	NA	NA
1992	NA	1992.pdf	NA	NA
1993	NA	1993.pdf	NA	NA
1994	NA	1994.pdf	NA	NA
1995	NA	1995.pdf	NA	NA
1996	NA	1996.pdf	NA	NA
1997	NA	1997.pdf	NA	NA
1998	NA	1998.pdf	1998_e.pdf	NA
1999	NA	1999.pdf	1999_e.pdf	NA
2000	NA	2000.pdf	2000_e.pdf	NA
2001	NA	2001.pdf	2001_e.pdf	NA
2002	NA	2002.pdf	2002_e.pdf	2002.sas
2003	NA	2003.pdf	2003_e.pdf	2003.sas
2004	NA	2004.pdf	2004_e.pdf	NA
2005	NA	2005.pdf	2005_e.pdf	2005.sas
2006	NA	2006.pdf	2006_e.pdf	2006.sas
2007	NA	2007.pdf	NA	2007.sas
2008	NA	2008.pdf	NA	2008.sas
2009	NA	2009.pdf	NA	NA
2010	NA	2010.pdf	NA	NA
2011	NA	2011.pdf	NA	NA
2012	NA	2012.pdf	NA	NA

Topics

Taxation

Data Categories

Individual Data - US