Recent literature highlights a paradox in corruption prevention messaging: instead of reducing tolerance for corruption, such campaigns can inadvertently intensify it by priming the existence of corruption while failing to diminish citizens beliefs about government misbehavior. Building on...

I document an important tax collection practice that is previously unknown to research on tax administration: mandatory taxpayer self-inspections. The practice emerged spontaneously across China in the 1990s and persists to this day despite having no basis in law. If taxpayers report additional...

The classic deterrence theory model of income tax evasion first articulated in 1972 has met significant criticism because it does not comport with the observed rate of tax compliance. This article argues that the classic expected utility model and its various progeny, including nonexpected...

We explore the role of tax administrations in the fight against inequality through data analysis of a survey consisting of 71 questions that we have designed and sent to the tax administrations of all EU Member States. The survey focuses mainly on the capacity concerning the enforcement of tax...

Technology is revolutionizing our lives. With the touch of a button or a simple voice command, we can instantly order groceries, get directions, or find the nearest sushi restaurant. Sensibly, the private sector has capitalized on these recent innovations to drive up profits. To sell more...

Wane develops a general model for addressing the question of how to compensate tax inspectors in an economy where corruption is pervasive - a model that considers the existence of strategic transmission of information. Most of the literature on corruption assumes that the taxpayer and the tax...

This paper examines how providing better information to customs inspectors and monitoring their actions affects tax revenue and fraud detection in Madagascar. First, an instrumental variables strategy is used to show that transaction-specific, third-party valuation advice on a subset of...

We examine the optimal auditing problem of a tax authority when taxpayers can choose both to evade and avoid. For a convex penalty function the incentive-compatibility constraints may bind for the richest taxpayer and at a positive level of both evasion and avoidance. The audit function is...

Valuation issues have long posed challenges for the U.S. federal tax system. This is not just because of questions about what technique will most accurately value particular types of property. A key problem for tax administration is that taxpayers have an incentive to claim erroneous,...