In 2004 more than 60 percent of all taxpayers used paid tax preparers. The percentage of taxpayers using paid preparers increased to about 73 percent for taxpayers claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit ("EITC") in 2006. Because most taxpayers use paid tax preparers there should be some means by...

We examine the impact on taxpayer compliance of corrupt auditors seeking bribes in the form of a percentage of taxes payable. The first experiment examines a setting where a taxpayer can choose to report higher income in the presence of a corrupt auditor to reduce the bribe on the under-reported...

Tax preparation firms advertise their services as a way to save taxes. To investigate this subject, we use a panel of German income tax accounting data, consisting of employees and other taxpayers with non-business income, to explore the relationship between expenses for tax preparation and tax...

This study introduces and tests the applicability of a signal for individual tax reporting aggressiveness using German income tax return data. Tax aggressiveness is often defined as dealing with uncertainty - or more precisely: ambiguity - in an exploitative manner. In other words, firms and...

One function of the tax code is to implement social policy, incentivizing members of the public to make decisions policymakers believe to be desirable. But the tax code is complex and acquiring and processing complex information is costly. In this study, we hypothesize that tax preparers serve...

The design of a tax system is a daunting task. Economies have become increasingly complex, which makes the design of taxes has to take into account behavioral taxpayers' responses -- including mobility -- but also tax planning issues. Additionally, increasing inequality trends put more pressure...