Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Harvard University, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [291]-[310]).

Cette thèse se fonde sur les résultats d’une enquête sur les représentations de la déviance fiscale construites par l’opinion publique en France et donne une réponse nouvelle à la question du consentement à l’impôt. Mêlant les méthodes quantitatives et qualitatives et se situant au carrefour de la science politique, de la sociologie, de la philosophie et de la psychologie, cette enquête révèle la manière dont la considération des représentations de la déviance fiscale peut conduire à la construction du civisme fiscal. En partant de l’influence des valeurs et des normes sous-jacentes aux représentations des évitements légaux et illégaux de l’impôt sur le comportement du contribuables, cette thèse propose une réflexion sur la nécessité d’un dépassement de l’opposition binaire entre le légal et l’illégal imposée par les réponses administratives et judiciaires aux évitements de l’impôt. Pour être efficace, la lutte contre l’« insécurité fiscale », pensée comme une voie de sortie possible de la crise économique, doit se construire dans et par la réappropriation citoyenne de la question fiscale et dans la défense d’une conception particulière du juste soutenue par un renouvellement du contrat social fiscal. / This dissertation is based on the results from a survey on the representations of tax deviance constructed by public opinion in France and gives a novel answer to the question of tax compliance. This research, situated at the crossroads between political science, sociology, philosophy and psychology, uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to reveal how the consideration of tax deviance representations can lead to the construction of fiscal civism. Looking first at the influence of values and norms which underlie the representations of legal and illegal tax avoidance on taxpayers’ behavior, this dissertation offers a reflection on the need to move beyond the binary opposition between the legal and illegal imposed by the administrative and judicial responses to tax avoidance. In order to be efficient, the fight against “fiscal insecurity”, considered as a possible way out of the economic crisis, must construct itself in and by the civic reappropriation of the fiscal question and in the defense of a particular conception of fairness supported by a renewal of the fiscal social contract.

L’étude de la réalité de la criminalité démontre que celle-ci a essentiellement un but économique. L’aspect financier peut aussi être un moyen significatif, notamment dans le cas du terrorisme. Pourtant, la réponse à la criminalité ne prend que très peu en compte la réalité économique de la criminalité et est tournée, de façon historique, vers la sanction physique. Le droit pénal concurrençant le droit fiscal, y compris sur des infractions de nature économique. Partant de ce constat, il devient nécessaire de faire évoluer la réponse à la criminalité afin de mieux répondre à cette réalité. Parmi les moyens déjà existants, le droit fiscal représente de nombreux avantages, notamment par le fait qu’il est conceptuellement tourné vers la lutte contre les flux financiers illicites, que ceux-ci soient ou non d’origine criminelle. Si le corpus juridique lié à la lutte contre la criminalité est peu tourné vers le droit fiscal, les quelques cas présents démontrent que celui-ci a un apport significatif, notamment par les moyens dont dispose l’administration fiscale (même s’ils sont sous-utilisés) en matière de recherche d’informations relatives aux flux financiers. La lutte contre la criminalité gagnerait aussi en efficacité si le paradigme de la réponse pénale était changé. Il faudra pour cela adopter une approche économique à l’instar de l’approche et des moyens mis en œuvre dans le cas de la fraude fiscale. Que ce soit en recherchant des sanctions économiques et non plus pénale ou en traitant l’environnement criminel comme un tout. / The study of the reality of crime shows that it has essentially an economic purpose. The financial aspect can also be a significant one, especially in the case of terrorism. However, the response to crime takes very little account of the economic reality of the crime and is, historically, based on criminal punishment. The tax law is in concurrence with the criminal law. In regard to this observation, it becomes necessary to change the response to crime in order to better meet this reality. Among the existing means, the tax law is representing several advantages, including the fact that it is conceptually directed to fight illicit financial flows, whether they are of criminal origin or not. If the body of law related to the fight against crime is not tax law oriented, the few existing cases show that it has a significant contribution, including the capacity of the tax administration (even though it is under-used) in research on information flows. The fight against crime could become much more effective if the paradigm of criminal law had changed. This change could be achieved by adopting an economic approach, like the approach and means used in the case of tax evasion. Whether seeking economic sanctions rather than criminal, or dealing with the criminal environment as a whole.

In this work we make analysis of the tax evasion practices which have become widely used by the small and medium enterprises in the Russian transitional economy. Taxation has always been the issue best describing relations between state and private business; in Russian economy taxation has come to characterize specificity of interactions between authorities at different levels of government and businessmen. We look at the current situation through the theoretical framework provided by the neoinstitutional theory which allows us to consider data and facts collected on the problem through the perspective of institutional change. By employing analytical tools of the neoinstitutionalism we consider tax evasion as a part of evolving institutional environment. Persistence and prevalence of the schemes used by small businesses to avoid payment of full tax liabilities leads us to qualify the current situation as an institutional dead-lock or in other words inefficient socio­ economic equilibrium: tax-evasion is seen as an illegal activity by the state and development-hampering by businesses, nonetheless the practice persists for decades. We consider that institutions are promoted and supported by different groups united by common socio-economic interest, therefore to describe and analyse this situation we identify...

Purpose: The purpose is to investigate the size of the shadow economy within the EU, by studying undeclared work, bribery and tax evasion in 28 Member States in 2013, and answer the question how to better combat shadow economy. Research design: The study is a quantitative research as it uses data from existing surveys and a report. The collected data is analyzed by multiplying the number of respondents with the percentage of the issue in each Member State. Calculating all three issues for 28 Member States presents the size of the shadow economy in the EU in 2013. Findings: Research has found that shadow economy is present within the EU. The study shows that the size of shadow economy in 2013 is 17,6 %. Amongst the three issues, tax evasion was more extensive than the other two issues. Besides regulation, there are other considerable factors that contribute to the gap in the shadow economy. The findings show that EU has taken measures to combat these issues. However, the study finds other measures to be needed to combat shadow economy. Contribution: This study contributes to the research of shadow economy within the EU by focusing on three issues: undeclared work, bribery and tax evasion. The study is supposed to raise awareness to not neglect the issues but rather combat them in a cross-border effort as shadow economy is not only affecting each Member States at national level but also at EU-level.

This thesis deals with the measurement of tax evasion. The first part deals with the theory of tax evasion, its general, legislative and economic definition and its consequences. A special subsection is devoted to relation of the tax evasion and the shadow economy. The second part deals with the theory of tax evasion measurement and the last chapter focuses on shadow economy volume measurement and tax evasion measurement in the Czech Republic.

For most, offshore company setups in countries such as Panama or Ireland are tied to thoughts of illegal activities leading to tax evasion. Although in many cases these preconceptions seem to be in order, in general we seem to miss a key point in reasoning of how and why these activities are possible. The conclusions this study provides are based on material derived from qualitative interviews conducted in Sweden and are used to argue against existing research findings which point the auditor as a key player in tax evasion arrangements and a reason of tax evasion existence. In addition, we argue that issues of tax evasion are of complex nature and therefore no individual profession can be pointed to as a scapegoat, instead additional research needs be done in order to map and understand the processes that are involved in setting up a tax evasion arrangement. Furthermore, the material gathered by this research suggests that a better understanding of tax evasion arrangements might form the ground for an international collaboration such as effective common regulation against tax evasion. The interviews which this study is based upon are conducted on auditor stakeholders who have an understanding in taxation issues and who work near auditors and therefore have an adequate understanding of the auditor profession. / nej

Literature on tax evasion has generally ignored the effects of tax evasion by a monopolist in a regulatory environment. When the government is asymmetrically informed about the monopolist's demand and/or costs, however, the fIrm may have the opportunity to cheat on its regulatory constraint and tax payments. Adjustments in the regulatory constraint then will directly impact on the tax revenues of the government while alterations in tax policies may alter the effectiveness and efficiency results of a particular regulatory policy. To analyze these issues two forms of regulation, a price ceiling regulation and a fixed profit per unit regulation are considered in an environment where the government is incompletely informed about the monopolist's cost function. For the price ceiling regulation (Chapter 2) it is shown that tax evasion decisions are affected by variations in the ceiling in the sense that an increase in the effective price ceiling results in misreporting by a larger proportion. Tax evasion decisions however are found not to affect output decisions of the monopolist. Thus the optimal price ceiling under evasion is set at the same level as without tax evasion, i.e., at the point where price equals expected marginal cost. Optimality in this economy can be achieved in a number of ways. Full compliance is one way but optimality can also be achieved with tax evasion. When the form of regulation considered is a fixed profit-per-unit regulation (Chapter 3), the results are quite different from above. Because profits of the monopolist are not costlessly observable by the government, fIrms can cheat on the regulatory constraint itself. Thus output and tax evasion to affect the monopolist's output. Literature on tax evasion has often neglected the fact that income from different sources is taxed at different rates and provides different opportunities for misreporting. Once an individual obtains certain skills, his flexibility in switching jobs to evade taxes on his wage income becomes limited. Also the fact that a large part of the wage income in the U.S. is reported to the government by the employer and often withheld at the source, greatly limits the opportunity for evading wage taxes. However an individual faces many options when deciding on how to invest his savings and the income from at least some of these may not be subject to withholding and reporting. This fact suggests that the savings of an individual can be affected by tax evading opportunities. Chapter 4 examines this problem by considering a dynamic model of tax evasion. The results show that an increase in the penalty rate or audit probability leads to an increase in savings of the individual, given some assumptions on preferences. This fact implies that savings are reduced by the possibility of tax evasion. It also suggests that savings could be increased by stricter enforcement of tax laws. Because the model used in chapter 4 is fairly complicated, some of the comparative static results are found to be ambiguous under general conditions. It is also not clear from the theory what the optimal policy of the government would be. To address these issues in more details, chapter 5 considers some numerical exercises. A number of results emerge from these exercises. First, savings are found to increase with an increase in either the penalty rate or the audit rate, even when the restrictive assumptions on risk aversion do not hold and labor supply is variable. Second, full compliance seems to be the optimal policy of the government for the specification selected. These results seem to hold both for compensated and uncompensated taxes. / Ph. D.

The federal income tax system in the United States depends upon a high degree of voluntary compliance. The IRS estimates that the voluntary compliance level is declining and that this tax compliance gap cost the government an estimated $90.5 billion in 1981. Between 1979 and 1982, Congress made several changes in the tax laws designed to improve tax compliance. Extensive data was collected by the IRS for 1979 and 1982 through the random sample audits of approximately 50,000 taxpayers on the Taxpayer Compliance Measurement Program (TCMP), which is conducted every three years. During the period 1979 through 1982, Congress lowered the marginal tax rates, added some fairly severe penalties, for both taxpayers and paid return preparers, and increased information reporting requirements for certain types of income. In this research, it was hypothesized that voluntary compliance should increase in response to lower marginal rates, a higher risk of detection due to additional reporting requirements, and increased penalties. Multiple regression analysis was employed to test these hypotheses, using 1979 and 1982 TCMP data. Because of the requirements for taxpayer confidentiality, it was necessary for the IRS to run the data and provide the aggregate data results for the research. The results provided insight into the effectiveness of tax compliance legislation. While the overall voluntary compliance level (VCL) increased from 1979 to 1982 by 1.53 per cent, the VCL increase for taxpayers in high marginal rates was much smaller (.42 percent) than the overall increase. This is very inconsistent with the notion that high marginal rates are driving noncompliance, and suggests that marginal rates may not be strong determinants of compliance. Probably other factors, such as opportunity for evasion, may be more important. There was little change from 1979 to 1982 of the compliance of returns done by paid return preparers. Because of the timing of many TEFRA provisions (effective in 1983), further research for years after 1982 is needed.