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<p>This study investigates whether U.S. presidents imprint partisan fiscal "fingerprints" on federal tax receipts through administrative discretion in enforcement and interpretation, independent of statutory tax codes and congressional tax legislation. Using National Income and Product Accounts data from 1929 onward, we compute annualized changes in the ratio of federal current receipts to GDP across presidential administrations and periods of congressional control, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Parametric and nonparametric tests reveal statistically significant directional increases under Democratic presidents and decreases under Republican presidents, consistent with ideological priors, with effects that are robust to the exclusion of wartime periods and short tenures. Robustness tests using logit and probit specifications, as well as an ordinary least squares regression, support findings that the party affiliation of the President is a statistically significant predictor of the direction of revenue changes. Congressional partisan control, by contrast, exhibits no significant influence. These results highlight the executive branch's capacity, through enforcement decisions, regulatory discretion, and interpretive authority, to shape revenue outcomes.</p>

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Do US presidents leave fiscal fingerprints? the power of the executive branch through a century of tax data

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月1日

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  • Brandon Parsons,
  • Mike Kimel

摘要

This study investigates whether U.S. presidents imprint partisan fiscal "fingerprints" on federal tax receipts through administrative discretion in enforcement and interpretation, independent of statutory tax codes and congressional tax legislation. Using National Income and Product Accounts data from 1929 onward, we compute annualized changes in the ratio of federal current receipts to GDP across presidential administrations and periods of congressional control, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Parametric and nonparametric tests reveal statistically significant directional increases under Democratic presidents and decreases under Republican presidents, consistent with ideological priors, with effects that are robust to the exclusion of wartime periods and short tenures. Robustness tests using logit and probit specifications, as well as an ordinary least squares regression, support findings that the party affiliation of the President is a statistically significant predictor of the direction of revenue changes. Congressional partisan control, by contrast, exhibits no significant influence. These results highlight the executive branch's capacity, through enforcement decisions, regulatory discretion, and interpretive authority, to shape revenue outcomes.