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...

Die Debatte über Offshore-Leaks und die sehr geringen Steuerzahlungen großer multinationaler Konzerne haben das öffentliche Interesse auf das Problem 'Steueroasen' gelenkt. Wenn Konzerne Steuersatzunterschiede zwischen verschiedenen Ländern ausnutzen, kann Steuergestaltung durchaus legal...

After giving a short literature review, the paper tries a quantification of the volume of money laundering activities, with the help of a MIMIC estimation procedure for the years 1995 to 2006 for 20 highly developed OECD countries. The volume of laundered money was 273 billions USD in the year...

Policy programs on anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) have largely called for preventive measures like keeping record of financial transactions and reporting suspicious ones. In this survey study, we analyze the extent of global money laundering and...

Sub-Saharan Africa economies introduced extensive reforms of their tax systems in the last two decades. In most of these countries taxes are now remitted through the self-assessment system that relies on quasi voluntary compliance and audit selection by risk. However, the revenues from direct...

We use data from the Survey of Financial Security and the Survey of Household Spending to estimate the incidence and extent of income under-reporting in Canada in 1998 and 2004. We estimate that the proportion of households under-reporting income is roughly 35 to 50 per cent in both years. Our...

The shadow (underground) economy plays a major role in many countries. People evade taxes and regulations by working in the shadow economy or by employing people illegally. On the one hand, this unregulated economic activity can result in reduced tax revenue and public goods and services, lower...

This paper presents the various methods to estimate the size of the shadow economy, their strengths and weaknesses. The purpose of the paper is twofold. Firstly, it demonstrates that no ideal method to estimate the size and development of the shadow economy exists. Because of its flexibility,...

The standard expected utility model of tax evasion predicts that evasion is decreasing in the marginal tax rate (the Yitzhaki puzzle). The existing literature disagrees on whether prospect theory overturns the puzzle. We disentangle four distinct elements of prospect theory and find loss...

The standard expected utility model of tax evasion predicts that evasion is decreasing in the marginal tax rate (the Yitzhaki Puzzle). The existing literature disagrees on whether prospect theory overturns the puzzle. We disentangle four distinct elements of prospect theory and find loss...