This paper analyzes the sources of heterogeneity in legal tax avoidance strategies across individuals. Three conditions are required for a taxpayer to participate in tax avoidance: incentive, access, and awareness. Using rich Swedish administrative panel data with a unique link between corporate...

The ethics of tax evasion has been discussed sporadically in the theological and philosophical literature for at least 500 years. Martin Crowe wrote a doctoral thesis that reviewed much of that literature in 1944. This paper begins with a review of the literature and identifies the main issues...

The Internal Revenue Code is riddled with features that allow U.S. taxpayers to reduce their federal tax liability by operating through tax haven companies. Some of these provisions are historic anomalies. Others are better understood as inadvertent loopholes than considered legislative grace....

Tax evasion is defined as the illegal nonpayment of a tax. Various arguments have been made over the centuries to justify tax evasion. Historically, the strongest arguments to justify tax evasion have been in cases where the people perceive the tax system to be unfair, where the government is...

The U.S. Tax Program for Swiss Banks is a very significant part of the recent history of the Swiss financial industry. It has accelerated the transformation of the Swiss banking industry from a system that relied on bank secrecy to a much more compliant one. It was also rather costly for the...

The U.S. Tax Program for Swiss banks is a very significant part of the recent history of the Swiss financial industry. It has accelerated the transformation of the Swiss banking industry from a system that relied on bank secrecy to a much more compliant one. It was also rather costly for the...

In a corporate inversion, a U.S.-incorporated taxpayer renounces its status as a U.S. corporation and becomes incorporated, for tax purposes, in a tax-friendly foreign jurisdiction. The recent surge in inversions is not a new phenomenon, and constitutes the fourth generation of these...

Using confidential microdata, I document that foreign multinational firms' income shifting out of the United States is positively associated with their real economic activity in the US. When these firms face greater restrictions on income shifting – resulting from the staggered implementation...