This paper analyzes the effects of an income tax credit for hard-to-tax consumer services on evasion of the value-added-tax (VAT). Based on the individual tax files of the universe of VAT payers in Germany, our analysis shows that harnessing incentives for consumers through tax credits fosters...

This report describes the Minnesota Income Tax Compliance Experiment conducted by the Minnesota Department of Revenue in 1995. The experiment tested alternate strategies to improve voluntary compliance with the state's individual income tax. These strategies included: increased examination and...

This reports the results of a follow-up experiment conducted to validate an earlier experiment showing that if taxpayers overestimate the prevalence of tax evasion, their compliance can be increased by informing them about the true rate of cheating. Tax compliance, therefore, is influenced...

We analyze the compliance costs of individual taxpayers resulting from the German income tax. Using survey data that has been raised between December 2008 and April 2009, we find evidence for a considerably higher cost burden of self-employed taxpayers. Taxable income and the demand for external...

This paper examines the impact of e-invoicing on firm tax compliance and performance using administrative tax data and quasi-experimental variation in the rollout of VAT electronic invoicing in Peru. We find that e-invoicing increases reported firm sales, purchases and value-added by over 5...

This paper employs unique tax administrative data and operational audit information from a sample of approximately 7,500 self-employed U.S. taxpayers to investigate the effects of operational tax audits on future reporting behavior. Our estimates indicate that audits can have substantial...

In this paper, we improve upon the Pissarides-Weber (PW) method for estimating tax evasion among the self-employed by utilizing unique register-based consumption measures from the Swedish and Finnish mandatory registers for pleasure boats. Our main contributions are twofold: i) The PW method...

We examine two Pakistani programs to see if the public disclosure of tax information and social recognition of top taxpayers promote tax compliance. Pakistan began revealing income tax paid by every taxpayer in the country from 2012. Simultaneously, another program began recognizing and...

In order to have optimal tax compliance in the field of tax reporting, under our current paradigm, we need clearly articulated but salient standards for record keeping. The popular belief that taxpayers do not need to keep adequate records creates a behavior distortion of noncompliance. This...

This article examines the optimal level of tax compliance and the optimal penalty for noncompliance in circumstances in which the substance of the tax law is uncertain that is, when the precise application of the Internal Revenue Code to a particular situation is not clear. In such situations, a...