Kleven, Henrik Jacobsen, Knudsen, Martin B., Kreiner, Claus Thustrup, Pedersen, Søren and Saez, Emmanuel (2010) Unwilling or unable to cheat? evidence from a randomized tax audit experiment in Denmark. Working Paper Series (15769). National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, USA.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
This paper analyzes a randomized tax enforcement experiment in Denmark. In the base year, a stratified and representative sample of over 40,000 individual income tax filers was selected for the experiment. Half of the tax filers were randomly selected to be thoroughly audited, while the rest were deliberately not audited. The following year, "threat-of-audit" letters were randomly assigned and sent to tax filers in both groups. Using comprehensive administrative tax data, we present four main findings. First, we find that the tax evasion rate is very small (0.3) for income subject to third-party reporting, but substantial (37) for self-reported income. Since 95 of all income is third-party reported, the overall evasion rate is very modest. Second, using bunching evidence around large and salient kink points of the nonlinear income tax schedule, we find that marginal tax rates have a positive impact on tax evasion, but that this effect is small in comparison to avoidance responses. Third, we find that prior audits substantially increase self-reported income, implying that individuals update their beliefs about detection probability based on experiencing an audit. Fourth, threat-of-audit letters also have a significant effect on self-reported income, and the size of this effect depends positively on the audit probability expressed in the letter. All these empirical results can be explained by extending the standard model of (rational) tax evasion to allow for the key distinction between self-reported and third-party reported incomes.
| Item Type: | Monograph (Working Paper) |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://www.nber.org/papers/w15769 |
| Additional Information: | © 2010 The Authors |
| Divisions: | Economics Centre for Economic Performance |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HJ Public Finance |
| JEL classification: | H - Public Economics > H3 - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents |
| Date Deposited: | 19 Apr 2011 11:52 |
| Last Modified: | 13 Sep 2024 20:16 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/35755 |
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