When tax structure changes, people may alter their consumption basket, but they also may call and give new instructions to their accountant, change their reports to the IRS, change the timing of transactions, and undertake a range of other actions that do not directly involve a change in their...

This paper analyzes the relationship between optimal taxation -- where the literature considers raising revenue with minimum distortion -- and optimal tax enforcement where much of the literature emphasizes raising revenue at the least cost. A central question concerns the extent to which...

Tax evasion can be defined as the circumvention, under any form, of the payment of taxes, duties and contributions owed to the state, in the shelter of the law or eluding the legal provisions. The taxpayers, be they legal persons or natural persons, manifest their desire to defend wealth, of...

This paper examines the impact of marginal tax rates, which incorporate the earned income tax credit (EITC) as it existed in 1988, on the reporting of income by low-income taxpayers. We generally find that misreported income is not affected by tax rates, except for proprietors. Negative marginal...

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...

We study experimentally how taxpayers choose between two tax regimes to fund a public good. The first-best tax regime imposes a general, distortion-free income tax. However, this tax cannot be enforced. The second-best alternative supplements the income tax by a specific commodity tax. This tax...

Tax evasion is modeled as a risky activity and integrated into a standard problem of optimal tax design. It is shown that there is a trade off between reducing tax evasion and reducing tax distortion. Thus it is efficient to supplement a broad-based wage tax by a tax on specific consumption if...