The Hidden Economy and the Tax-Gap in New Zealand: A Latent Variable Analysis

This paper develops a structural, latent variable, model for the hidden economy in New Zealand, and a separate currency-demand model. The latent variable model is used to generate an historical time-series index of hidden economic activity, which is calibrated via the information from the currency-demand model. The hidden economy varies between 6.8% and 11.3% of measured GDP. This, in turn, implies that the tax-gap is of the order of 6.4% to 10.2% of total tax liability in that country.