It is common to summarize the impact of tax havens as a shift of tax revenues from high to low-tax jurisdictions. This chapter discusses the economic impact of tax havens that goes beyond a zero-sum transfer of the tax base, what we label real effects. We review the literature and focus on...

This paper studies majority voting on taxes when tax evasion is possible. We characterize the voting equilibrium where the agent with median taxed income is pivotal. Since the ranking of true incomes does not necessarily correspond to the ranking of taxed incomes, the decisive voter can differ...

In a simple cash-credit model, I study the effects of the combination of costly tax collection and tax evasion on fiscal and monetary policy for optimal resource allocation. Allowing the informal sector to use cash more intensively than the formal sector, I compute the optimal interest and tax...

In this paper, I investigate to what extent the cross-country variation in nominal interest rates can be explained as being due to governments' optimal response to economic conditions such as tax collection costs, tax evasion and government consumption needs. In particular, I study the effects...

Many countries apply lower fines to tax evading individuals when they voluntarily disclose the tax evasion they committed. I model such voluntary disclosure mechanisms theoretically and show that while such mechanisms increase the incentive to evade taxes, they nevertheless increase tax revenues...

To determine the full effects of taxation on income distribution, policymakers need to consider the impacts of tax evasion. In the standard analysis of tax evasion, all the benefits are assumed to accrue to tax evaders. But tax evasion has other impacts that determine its true effects. As...

In recent years tax authorities worldwide have implemented voluntary disclosure schemes to recover tax on offshore investments. Such Schemes are characterized by the acquisition of non-audit information on offshore holdings, and a subsequent opportunity for affected taxpayers to make a voluntary...

The main goal of this study is two-fold: (1) to provide a general overview of thecontributions to the literature on the informal sector, with a special focus on the PublicChoice approach; and (2) to compare these contributions across two institutionallydifferent types of countries: developed and...

Recent literature on tax evasion emphasizes the importance of moral considerations to explain compliance behavior. As a consequence scholars aim to identify factors that shape this so-called tax morale. However, the causal link between tax morale and actual compliance behavior is not established...