The tax and fiscal reforms headed by German finance minister Matthias Erzberger in 1919 and 1920 fundamentally reshaped German public finances. The total tax revenue as a percentage of GDP, or tax-to-GDP ratio, doubled and increased continually until the end of World War II. Since the 1950s, the...

In Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue, Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod have written a fantastic book that collects and loosely organizes a treasure trove of anecdotes about tax systems, trivia, and events around the world and throughout history. In many respects the book, which endeavors to include...

This study retraces the history of tax compliance in Italy from unification to today. We review the attempts at evaluating the gap between actual and potential tax revenue, from nineteenth-century descriptive statistics up until the formal estimates of recent decades, which distinguish lawful...