This paper presents an empirical analysis of the relationship between fiscal illusion and the shadow economy for 104 countries over the period 1989-2009. We argue that both unobservable phenomena are closely linked to each other, as the creation of a fiscal illusion may be helpful if governments...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. On the one hand it aims at extending King-Fullerton methodology to a larger scope of liabilities and primarily, in the empirical section of the paper, to statutory charges associated to labour costs, basically employers' contributions to social security....

"We document that simulated corporate marginal tax rates based on financial statement data (Shevlin 1990 and Graham 1996a) are highly correlated with simulated rates based on corporate tax return data. We provide algorithms that can be used to estimate the book or tax simulated rates when they...