Anecdotal evidence suggests that the income tax penalty associated with marriage contributes to the decision of a couple to live together as a married vs. a cohabiting couple. In this paper, we use household data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics to estimate the impact of various factors,...

There is a large empirical literature that demonstrates the importance of economic factors in the decision to marry. Taxes, however, have been largely overlooked as a determinant of marriage, even though the tax system in the United States is not marriage-neutral; that is, when two individuals...

A model of individual tax compliance behavior, including evasion and avoidance, is developed and estimated. The model recognizes the importance of marginal income tax rates, payroll tax contributions and benefits, and the probability of detection and the penalty on unpaid taxes. Share equations...

This paper uses experimental methods to explore the major factors that affect tax compliance. Perhaps most importantly, the role of social norms in compliance is examined by comparing compliance experiments administered in different countries (Spain versus the United States), countries whose...

In this paper we examine what experiments on tax compliance have revealed about compliance behavior, and we discuss what these experiments can reveal about managerial and decision economics. We draw two general conclusions from this discussion. First, compliance is a complicated decision, one...

This paper uses experimental methods to examine the effectiveness of endogenous audit selection rules in which the audit probability depends upon taxpayer actions. The results indicate that endogenous rules are able to generate compliance far greater than random audit rules, even when the random...