For most parameter values, increased randomness about how much taxable income an auditor would assess leads to higher reported income and more revenue, When reducing randomness is costly, optimality requires some randomness in assessed taxable Income. Even if reducing randomness g costless,...

Property taxes in developing countries are plagued by noncompliance and can exacerbate liquidity constraints. We characterize optimal enforcement and taxation policies as functions of revenue elasticities and measures of taxpayer hardship. We estimate these parameters using multiple sources of...

We examine two Pakistani programs to explore the role of deterrence as well as social and psychological factors in the tax compliance behavior of agents. In the first of these programs, the government began revealing income tax paid by every taxpayer in the country. The second program publicly...

We use a new dataset consisting of the universe of Greek corporate tax returns matched to financial statements to study a voluntary tax compliance program for small firms. This "self-assessment" program prescribed target taxable profit margins for different types of activity. Firms that reported...

Why do some individuals choose to evade taxes while others do not? One popular view is that some individuals cheat on their taxes because they are more dishonest, selfish, or perceive different social norms. There is, however, little direct evidence on this matter. In collaboration with the...

A recent literature has studied bunching at notches in tax systems; but work on the implications of bunching for welfare has been limited. We consider a setting where there are discrete changes in the enforcement of tax compliance at certain levels of reported income, creating notches that can...

The 1993 tax legislation raised marginal tax rates to 36 percent from 31 percent on taxable incomes between $140,000 and $250,000 and to 39.6 percent on incomes above $250,000. This paper uses recently published IRS data on taxable incomes by adjusted gross income class to analyze how the 1993...