Using Paradata to Calibrate the Quarterly Summary of State and Local Government Tax Revenue

• Activity Number: 51
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 3, 2014 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Courtney Marie Hill*+ and Justin Nguyen
• Companies: U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Census Bureau
• Keywords: Paradata ; Quarterly Tax ; Calibration

Abstract

In planning the estimation methodology for the Quarterly Summary of State and Local Government Tax Revenue (QTax), we decided to use additional data captured during the process of data collection, paradata, to improve the estimates. QTax is comprised of three components: local property tax, state tax, and local non-property tax. In this paper, we focus on local non-property taxes. These taxes include Individual Income, Corporation Net Income, and General Sales and Gross Receipts. We have paradata information on which governments responded each quarter. In our research, we used the paradata to improve sample design and the estimates. From the paradata, we developed a response propensity model to adjust the survey weights due to nonresponse. In this paper, we discuss how to use the paradata in our models and calibration estimators with adjusted weights and census calibration totals to produce the estimates that agree with the totals from the Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances and from the Census of Governments.