A Cluster Analysis Approach To Describing Tax Data

The Statistics of Income (SOI) Division of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) produces data using information reported on tax returns. These administrative data are used by the Department of the Treasury, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and various Federal statistical agencies and are disseminated to the public via the World Wide Web and publications such as the SOI Bulletin. The Corporate Foreign Tax Credit (CFTC) study is in many ways typical of SOI studies. Data are collected from tax forms (in this case Form 1118) by SOI field staff and are subjected to error resolution by analysts at National Headquarters. The errorresolved data are used to create statistical tables that are published annually with descriptive text and technical notes. These statistical tables display selected aggregate fields from Form 1118 by industry, type of income, and country to which foreign taxes were paid.