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IRS Migration Data & Profiles. From the Missouri Census Data Center. Track Migration Via Tax Returns. IRS matches households across consecutive tax years Able to determine if a return that came from County A in year N comes from a different county the following year.
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IRS Migration Data & Profiles From the Missouri Census Data Center
Track Migration Via Tax Returns • IRS matches households across consecutive tax years • Able to determine if a return that came from County A in year N comes from a different county the following year. • If 500 returns filed from LA County, CA in 2004 are matched to returns in 2005 from Clark co, NV in 2005 – what does it mean?
Background • IRS has produced their county-to-county summary files for years. • These are used by the FSCPE as a key input for the migration portion of the annual county estimates. • Files are not freely available; IRS uses them as a cash cow.
http://enterprise.star-telegram.com/ARCIms/Maps/clt/2007/irsmig.asphttp://enterprise.star-telegram.com/ARCIms/Maps/clt/2007/irsmig.asp • Charlotte Observer Creates online Access
Inspired by the Charlotte Observer site… • We (Missouri Census Data Center) contacted the IRS and placed our order for data back to 1999/2000 and thru 2004/2005. • Paid several hundred $. Received a cd-rom with lots and lots of Excel files. • Two xls files per county: 1 for in-movers and 1 for out-movers.
We Converted the xls Files • Access the resulting data collection athttp://mcdc2.missouri.edu/cgi-bin/uexplore?/pub/data/irsmig • Original data in csv format saved here as well as the xls files -- for Mo only. • Usinmig9900 thru usinmig0506 are the huge datasets with inmigration. • Corresponding usoutmig datasets have out-migration data.
Datasets are Nice But Reports… • Are what everybody wants. So we needed to create an application that would turn the raw data into something users could easily access and interpret. • We created a profile application that displayed all relevant data for a single county – the “IRS Migration Profile”.
Profile Details • Report title identifies the county; subtitle indicates the years. • Each line of report summarizes implied migration “flows” both into and out of the profile county. • The “Migration Flow Area” can be another county or some larger total (such as total or total domestic).
The LA Migration Profile Tells Us… • Under “Migration Into…/ # Returns” in first row we find 100,584 . This is the total # of tax returns filed in LA county in 2005 that were NOT linked to a return in that county in 2004. So this is a proxy for in-migration at the HH level. • The 165,767 # Exemptions figure is just the total exemptions reported on those 100,584 returns. • $23,179 was the median (middle) gross income fig for those 100,584 returns.
Migration Out of Los Angeles CA • These 4 items (rightmost columns of profile) track “out-migration”. • Based on returns filed in LA county in 2004 that were found in a different county or country in 2005. • It does not include people who did not file in 2005 (such as people who died).
About the Report • Only migration flows of 10 or more are reported on the IRS files and hence in these reports. • A parm can be specified to raise this threshold. I.e. you can specify you only want to see data for areas where there at least 40 total flows. • Gross flows = #Returns Into + #Returns Out of. • The report is sorted by descending Gross flows.
Generating a Report • Access the main menu page at http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/cgi-bin/uexplore?/pub/data/irsmig/Migration_Profiles • To locate this URL go to the Missouri Census Data Center home page and do a search on “IRS profile”; follow the “What’s New” link. • Select a state first. Then on the application page choose the county, the year(s) and, if needed, a higher threshold. • Click the Generate Report button.
Note Also… • http://mcdc.missouri.edu/data/irsmig/Migration_Profiles/ is an alternate URL. • If you fail to choose a county you will get a report showing state totals only – not very interesting. • You can also find a link to these reports using our applinks interface; the URL is of the form: http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/cgi-bin/applinks?&st=<ss>&co=<ccc>Where <ss> is the 2-digits fips state code and <ccc> is the fips county code. The irsmig_profile entry will be the last on the resulting menu page.
More Notes • The latest year of data (based on tax years 2005 & 2006) did not have any data on gross income. Not sure if gone forever. • IRS was reluctant to sell us the 05/06 data (because we were putting it on the web.) • See article by Emily Groos, IRS, at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/05gross.pdf
Questions? John Blodgett blodgettj@umsystem.edu