Australian top income shares extended from 1912 to 1920

Because the series for Australia as a whole starts only in 1921, Atkinson and Leigh (2007) examined the evidence for the state of Victoria that covers the earlier period 1912–21. Alone among the Australian states, Victorian income tax statistics in the 1910s separated individual taxpayers from corporations. Comparing the two series in overlapping years (1921–23) they notice that Victorian top income shares are very close to those in Australia as a whole. Assuming therefore that the Victorian series was representative of Australia as a whole during the 1910s, this suggests that Australian top income shares fell, though only modestly, during the First World War.