Efforts to avoid punishment are socially wasteful. Not only do they limit the deterrent effect of punishment, but they may actually lead to the paradoxical result that more severe punishment for crime induces more crime. The law has therefore constantly attempted to deter avoidance efforts and...

This paper analyzes how income taxation affects optimal law enforcement. A key insight of the analysis is that if monetary sanctions are deductible, income taxation is equivalent to increasing offenders' wealth. This implies, for example, that income taxation reduces the social costs of crime...

The existing literature on the effects of taxation on income-producing crimes lays claim to several important implications: first, that a pure income tax regime maintains the (efficient) level of crime with respect to risk neutral offenders; second, that the current U.S. income tax laws under...