This paper analyzes the links between corporate tax avoidance, the growth of highpowered incentives for managers, and the structure of corporate governance. We develop and test a simple model that highlights the role of complementarities between tax sheltering and managerial diversion in...

This paper analyzes a large sample of unit records relating to tax audit cases for individual New Zealand firms, undertaken by Inland Revenue New Zealand over the period 1993 to 1995. The data are used to reveal the key characteristics that are associated with firms that comply, or fail to...

Differences in excise taxes across jurisdictions create incentives for consumers to cross the border and to purchase in lower-tax jurisdictions. This paper introduces a discrete choice model to examine tax avoidance and state border crossing in the market for cigarettes. We exploit a rich...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes the major factors that may have contributed to the marked widening of the external current account imbalance in Greece since the mid-1990s, with the deficit reaching one of the highest levels (in relation to GDP) among advanced economies. The factors reviewed...

This paper presents Indonesia’s 2005 Article IV Consultation and Third Post-Program Monitoring discussions. The economic strategy has produced positive results over time. Economic growth has gained momentum year by year, inflation has been substantially reduced, and the external position...

Like any tax, the VAT is vulnerable to evasion and fraud. But its credit and refund mechanism does offer unique opportunities for abuse, and this has recently become an urgent concern in the European Union (EU). This paper describes the main forms of noncompliance distinctive to a VAT, considers...

Tax reform in Latin America during the 1980s emphasized broad-based, low-rate consumption taxes over steeply progressive income and property taxes, primarily to simplify the tax structure and facilitate tax administration. While tax reform need not necessarily raise tax-to-GDP ratios, countries...

Economists agree that accounting specialists are helpful in avoiding taxes. We argue that such help can often be called sophisticated evasion. We analyze it in a game of incomplete information played by tax authority, corporate taxpayers and accounting specialist. When sophisticated evasion is...

To what extent do people avoid taxes on intra-family transfers (bequests and gifts), and how would integration (unification) of the different transfers taxes affect tax avoidance? These issues are important for families and their welfare, as well as for governments and their possibilities of...

Many countries have participated in re-imports, a type of round-trip trade originating from a country and back to the same country. China, as the largest re-importer, has imported more from itself than from the U.S. since 2005. As the first empirical study on re-imports, this paper shows that...