We experimentally examine the impact of tax evasion attempts on the performance of credence goods markets, where contractual incompleteness results from asymmetric information on the welfare maximizing quality of the good. Our results suggest that tax evasion attempts – independently of...

Both buyers and sellers of goods and services may benefit from letting their economic transactions go unrecorded for tax purposes. The supplier reduces his tax burden by underreporting income, whereas the consumer gains from buying a non-taxed lower-priced product. The distributional...

Business income is systematically underreported and accounts for a sizeable share of the US tax gap. In this paper, I examine the importance of tax evasion in the entrepreneurial sector for the effects of tax reforms. In particular, I analyze the long-run effects of switching from a progressive...

Should attorneys be punished for aiding and abetting tax evasion? The impulsive reply, as well as the politically correct answer, is “yes.” However, closer reflection reveals that the answer is not so cut and dried. This paper reviews the major ethical arguments that take the position that...

This paper analyzes the relationship between cash and tax evasion by studying the effects of two measures to fight evasion: accessing taxpayers’ banking data to check the consistency with reported income and discouraging the use of cash with thresholds on payments. We show that variation in...

This paper analyzes corporate tax evasion in a principal-agent model with multitasking. A firm-owner hires a specialist tax manager who chooses the quantity as well as the quality of tax evasion. Higher quality is a form of self-insurance and lowers the firm's expected fine for tax evasion. In...

We study optimal income taxation in a framework where one's willingness to report his income truthfully is positively correlated with his type. We show that allowing low-productivity types to cheat leads to Pareto-superior outcomes as compared to deterring them, even if audits can be performed...

Using a Cournot oligopoly model with an endogenous number of firms and evasion of indirect taxes, this paper shows that more intense competition may have the negative side-effect of eroding tax revenues by increasing tax evasion. This will be the case if market entry costs decrease. A similar...

In a unionized labor market, a substitution of a payroll for an income tax will not alter employment if tax obligations are fulfilled. However, if workers or firms can evade taxes, this irrelevance result might no longer apply. This will especially be the case if the fine for tax evasion depends...