This paper studies the role of beliefs about how own appearance and performance affect the subjective probability of being audited in a compliance situation, e.g. at customs. In an experiment in which underreporting has a higher expected payoff than truthful reporting we find an increase in...

We document that the first leak of customer information from a tax haven bank caused a significant decrease in the market value of Swiss banks known to be assisting with tax evasion and that the decrease was largest for the banks most strongly involved. These findings suggest that markets...

Much work has been done by international organizations, tax scholars around the world and business experts on the future shape of the taxation of the digitalized economy. Starting from the assumption that any “ring-fencing” of the digitalized economy should be avoided, it is far from easy to...

For decades the Swiss banking secrecy has made it a criminal act for banks in Switzerland to reveal information about their customers' identities. As of 2018, Switzerland will exchange banking information on foreign bank customers with the respective home countries on an automatic basis. This...

The question of why and how to tax the digitalized economy has been at the top of the international tax policy debate since the inception of the BEPS Action Plan in 2013. Over the years, a number of approaches have been discussed, including far-reaching proposals to fully or partially...

The provision of public goods by any government generally requires a significant amount of financial resources. Yet, the inherent characteristics of public goods imply that individuals who refuse to contribute financially cannot easily be excluded from the benefits provided by public goods. This...

In two recent cases “T Danmark” and “N Luxembourg 1” the European Court of Justice delivered landmark judgments on the impact of the concept of “abuse of law” in the area of taxation. In these judgments the Court promoted the recurrent notion that “European law cannot be relied...

This paper derives a government's optimal tax audit policy when taxpayers hold different beliefs about the likelihood of a tax audit. When audits are inexpensive, differences in perceived audit risk lead to stricter optimal auditing in equilibrium. If audits are relatively costly, heterogeneity...

This paper studies how imposing norms on contribution behavior affects individuals' intrinsic motivation. We consider an urban area in Germany where the Catholic Church collects a local church levy as a charitable donation, despite the fact that the levy is legally a tax. In cooperation with the...

We provide evidence on both innovative as well as known behavioral strategies aimed at improving tax compliance, using a unified environment of two large correspondence experiments (N=82,599 and N=51,142) with potential TV-fees evaders in the Czech Republic. We (i) simplify the original letter...