Tax collection problems date back to the earliest recorded history of mankind. This paper begins with a simple theoretical construct of paying (rather than declaring) taxes, which we argue has been an overlooked aspect of tax compliance. This construct is then tested in two large natural field...

We study the effects of wealth taxation on reported wealth. Our analysis is based on data for Switzerland, which has the highest rate of annual wealth taxation in the developed world. While the wealth tax base is defined at the federal level, tax rates vary considerably across locations and over...

This project examines how reminders affect tax filing among lower-income nonfilers (individuals who did not appear on a filed tax return but had income reported by third parties to the Internal Revenue Service). We present novel data on this population and results from two randomized controlled...

We investigate the response of small businesses operating as sole proprietorships to Form 1099-K, an information report released in 2011 which provides the Internal Revenue Service with information about payment card sales. Theory and distributional analysis isolates affected taxpayers, who...

Because of the obtrusive manner in which they are normally paid, property taxes are likely the most salient taxes in the U.S. However, they are much less salient to homeowners with tax escrow. Exploiting geographical variation in tax escrow, we test how salience affects property tax rates and...

There is a large literature showing that the self employed underreport their income to tax authorities. In this paper, we quantify the extent to which the self employed systematically underreport their income to U.S. household surveys. To do so, we use the Engel curve describing the relationship...

This paper uses tax return data for the period 1951-1990 to investigate the rising share of adjusted gross income (AGI) that is reported on very high income tax returns. We find that most of the increase in the share of AGI reported by high-income taxpayers is due to an increase in reported...

This paper presents a method of studying the distributional consequences of corporate tax changes by imputing to individual tax returns the net effect of changes in effective corporate tax rates. Particular attention is given to the difference between nominal and real capital income, to the...

This paper reviews recent economic research in tax compliance and enforcement. After briefly laying out the economics of tax evasion, it focuses on recent empirical contributions. It first discusses what methodologies and data have facilitated these contributions, and then presents critical...