Third-party reporting and employers' tax withholding are powerful compliance mechanisms, as long as the employer and employee do not collude to evade. Using data from randomly assigned on-site audits among 2,462 Norwegian firms, we provide evidence of collusive tax evasion. We find that firms...

Drawing on newly published macroeconomic statistics, this paper estimates the amount of household wealth owned by each country in offshore tax havens. The equivalent of 10% of world GDP is held in tax havens globally, but this average masks a great deal of heterogeneity--from a few percent of...

This paper attempts to estimate the size and distribution of tax evasion in rich countries. We combine random audits--the key source used to study tax evasion so far--with new micro-data leaked from large offshore financial institutions--HSBC Switzerland ("Swiss leaks") and Mossack Fonseca...

Business income is important in the upper tail of the personal income distribution, but the extent to which it is captured by measures of personal income varies substantially across tax regimes. Using linked individual and firm data from Norway, we are able to attribute business income to...

In 2004 Norwegian authorities announced a reform introducing dividend taxation for personal (but not corporate) owners to take effect starting in 2006. This change provided incentives to maximize dividends in 2004 and 2005, and to retain earnings in the following years. Using Norwegian registry...