Tax amnesties are government programs that typically allow a short period of time for tax evaders to voluntarily repay previously evaded taxes without being subject to penalties and prosecution that discovery of such tax evasion normally brings. Tax amnesties differ widely in terms of coverage, tax types, and incentives offered. A state’s Voluntary Disclosure Programme is another avenue available to taxpayers to assist them in resolving their state tax delinquencies. This programme is an on-going programme as compared to a tax amnesty, which is there for a limited time period only. The main goal of the research was to describe the tax amnesty and the voluntary disclosure programmes in South Africa and to assess their advantages and disadvantages. This thesis also discussed another form of voluntary disclosure programme, referred to as an Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Programme, which allows taxpayers with unreported foreign bank accounts, and presumably unreported foreign income, to voluntarily disclose their affairs. The study found that, due to tax amnesties, Government raises more tax revenue not only in the short run from collecting overdue taxes but also by bringing former non-filers back into the tax system for the long run. It was also found that, initially short-run revenue brought in from overdue taxes will be positive for the first amnesty and then decline each time the amnesty is offered repeatedly. The reason for the decline in revenue might be that tax amnesties provide incentives for otherwise honest taxpayers to start evading taxes because they will anticipate the offering of future amnesties, thereby weakening tax compliance. The costs associated with amnesty programmes include negative long run revenue impact and also that amnesty programmes reduce compliance by taxpayers in the long-run. In South Africa tax amnesties, especially the voluntary disclosure programme, are likely to be successful since they will increase the revenue yield and also bring non-filers back on the tax rolls.

Essay I: This essay provides an overview of the history of the Swedish pension system. Starting with the implementation of the public pension system in 1913, it outlines the key components of each major pension reform up until today along with a discussion of the main trade-offs and concerns that policy makers have faced. It also describes the historical background of the four largest occupational pension plans in Sweden and the mutual influence between these plans and the public pension system.        Essay II: Despite the fact that the increasing involvement of the private sector in pension provision has brought more flexibility to the pay-out phase of retirement, little is known about the characteristics of those who choose to annuitize their pension wealth and those who do not. I combine unique micro-data from a large Swedish occupational pension plan with rich national administrative data to study the choice between life annuities and fixed-term payouts with a minimum payout length of 5 years for 183,000 retiring white-collar workers. I find that low accumulation of assets is strongly associated with the choice of the 5-year payout. Consistent with individuals selecting payout length based on private information about their mortality prospects, individuals who choose the 5-year payout are in worse health, exhibit higher ex-post mortality rates and have shorter-lived parents than annuitants. Individuals also seem to respond to large, tax-induced changes in annuity prices.            Essay III: This essay estimates the causal effect of postponing retirement on a wide range of health outcomes using Swedish administrative data on cause-specific mortality, hospitalizations and drug prescriptions. Exogenous variation in retirement timing comes from a reform which raised the age at which broad categories of Swedish local government workers were entitled to retire with full pension benefits from 63 to 65. The reform caused a remarkable shift in the retirement distribution of the affected workers, increasing the actual retirement age by more than 4.5 months. Instrumental variable estimation results show no effect of postponing retirement on the overall consumption of health care, nor on the risk of dying early. There is evidence, however, of a reduction in diabetes-related hospitalizations and in the consumption of drugs that treat anxiety. Essay IV (with Per Engström): The consumption based method to estimate underreporting among self-employed, introduced by Pissarides and Weber (1989), is one of the workhorses in the empirical literature on tax evasion/avoidance. We show that failure to account for transitory income fluctuations in current income may overestimate the degree of underreporting by around 40 percent. Previous studies typically use instrumental variable methods to address the issue. In contrast, our access to registry based longitudinal income measures allows a direct approach based on more permanent income measures. This also allows us to evaluate the performance of a list of instruments widely used in the previous literature. Our analysis shows that capital income is the most suitable instrument in our application, while education and housing related measures do not seem to satisfy the exclusion restrictions.

The role of tax havens in the global issue of tax evasion has been illustrated by numerous studies. In 2009, a major international initiative has been launched by G20 and OECD with a purpose to put an end to offshore tax evasion. Yet the outcomes of this tax haven crackdown are often contested. This thesis brings new findings to the empirical research that has been done on the field of crackdown's evaluation. First, I confirm the results of earlier academic papers and I find a negative impact of information exchange treaties on the value of funds placed in tax havens. Second, I extend the existing research shifting the attention to deposits in non-havens, concluding that also the money from tax havens placed on non-havens' bank accounts disappear after signing a treaty. In the final part of the thesis, I - for the first time in literature - link the data on cross-border deposits with a measure of financial secrecy. I find that a decrease in secrecy score corresponds to a decline in deposits on a sample of all countries and non-havens. All my findings suggest that weakening the financial secrecy is associated with a significant outflow of cross-border deposits.

La récurrence du déficit public en Guinée et la difficulté subséquente de financer les services publics, exigent que des ressources financières soient davantage identifiées pour y pallier. Parmi les moyens de résorption du déficit, l'impôt, du fait de sa faible participation budgétaire (17% contre 20% du PIB dans les pays de la sous-région Ouest-africaine) constitue une des recettes publiques dont le rendement doit être substantiellement amélioré. L'atteinte d'un tel objectif requiert d'abord que nous réformions la politique fiscale  : outre la mise en exergue des accords commerciaux dont les implications fiscales et douanières amenuisent les recettes budgétaires, et les dépenses fiscales consécutives aux politiques d'attraction des investissements étrangers, il importe de proposer des stratégies d'amélioration du rendement fiscal, lesquelles consistent à réformer d'une part la fiscalité intérieure et d'autre part, à renforcer la coopération fiscale internationale en vue de mieux lutter contre la fraude et l'évasion fiscales. Il importe ensuite que nous nous intéressions aux rapports entre l'administration des impôts et le contribuable. Il s'agit notamment d'identifier les raisons du manque de civisme du contribuable guinéen. Celles-ci se résument à une propension de l'administration financière publique, dotée d'importants pouvoirs, à renflouer les caisses publiques face à des contribuables qui ne bénéficient que de faibles garanties juridiques, et à une profonde méfiance de ces derniers quant à la bonne gestion de l'impôt acquitté, ce qui nécessite des mesures extra-fiscales garantissant l'efficacité et l'efficience des ressources publiques, donc fiscales. / The recurrence of the public deficit in Guinea and the subsequent difficulty of financing public services, requires that more financial resources are identified to address them. Among the means of reducing the deficit, tax, due to its low budget participation (17% against 20% of GDP in the countries of the West African sub-region) is a government revenue whose performance must be substantially improved.Achieving this goal requires first that we reform the tax policy : In addition to highlighting commercial agreements including tax and customs implications dwindling budget revenues, and tax expenditures resulting from the policy of attraction of foreign investments, it is important to improve the tax efficiency strategies, which consist firstly to reform domestic taxation and secondly, to strengthen international tax cooperation to improve the fight against fraud and tax evasion. It is then important that we pay attention in the relationship between the tax administration and the taxpayer. These include identifying the reasons for the lack of civism of the Guinean taxpayer. They boil down to a propensity of public financial administration, with significant powers, to bail out public funds facing taxpayers benefiting from weak legal guarantees, and a deep mistrust of the latter in the good management of the tax-paid, which requires measures extra-fis which requires criminal measures to ensure the effectiveness and the efficiency of public resources, thus taxThey boil down to a propensity of public financial administration, with significant powers, to replenish public funds facing taxpayers who receive only weak legal safeguards and a deep distrust of the latter on the good management of the tax paid, which requires extra tax measures to guarantee the effectiveness and efficiency of public resources, thus tax.

During May 2007 it was announced that individual taxpayers would receive simplified tax return forms, will not need to do any more calculations and will no longer need to attach supporting documentation for the 2007 year of assessment. It was also announced that the tax system would be changed, making the turn around times for the assessment of tax returns faster. The primary objective of this research was to determine what effect the new tax return form, as well as the new tax system, would have on the tax practitioner submitting their client’s return. It was considered impractical to compare this study to other studies done. It was therefore decided that a questionnaire would be sent out. After considering all the research performed, it could be concluded that the new tax return form, as well as the new tax filing system, was welcomed by the taxpayer and the tax practitioner, and was a definite improvement, although some implementation problems were encountered. Copyright / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Taxation / unrestricted

Pour lutter efficacement contre les phénomènes de fraude et d'évasion fiscales internationales favorisés par l'opacité des juridictions offshores et l'attractivité des paradis fiscaux, Je législateur a eu recours aux présomptions. Cette technique juridique a pour caractéristique de modifier la dialectique de la preuve en faveur de l'administration, qui n'est plus tenue de faire la démonstration de la fraude ou de l'évasion, mais seulement d'un ou de plusieurs faits connexes à l'infraction frauduleuse ou au fait d'optimisation fiscale abusive. En pratique, le législateur a souvent eu recours à des présomptions à la force renforcée, renversant directement le fardeau de la preuve sur le contribuable qui est d'emblée tenu d'établir la preuve d'un fait connexe exonératoire à l'infraction ou au fait abusif. Pour muscler leur efficacité, le législateur a également introduit des présomptions irréfragables, au couperet définitif. Les présomptions simples caractérisées par une clause anti-abus centrée sur l'objet ont pour particularité de faire peser sur le contribuable la charge d'une preuve qualitativement supérieure. Ces présomptions, dont l'actionnement est conditionné à la preuve d'un fait connexe par l'administration, représentent une catégorie hétérodoxe de dispositifs présomptif renforcés, obligeant le contribuable à faire un effort d'analyse sur les finalités des opérations, ce qui revient à lui faire supporter la charge de la preuve de l'absence d'abus de droit. L'emploi des présomptions se heurte essentiellement aux droits et liberté économiques communautaire et conventionnels, obligeant Je législateur à adapter les dispositifs présomptifs à ces contraintes. / In order to struggle efficiently against tax avoidance and tax evasion tendencies, enhanced by offshore jurisdictions, often lacking transparency, and tax havens with their attractive conditions, the lawmaker has enabled rebuttable and conclusive presumptions to be used in suing cases. These legal tricks favour Tax administrations in winning the argument, since those are no longer required to bring compelling evidence of tax avoidance or tax evasion. It is enough to prove a fraud, an offence or an aggressive tax optimisation process with one or several connected facts. In practice, the lawmaker is often using strengthened standards on presumption to reverse the burden of proof onto the taxpayer, who therefore must provide evidence for any exemptions from responsibility regarding the alleged offence or abuse. To improve these tools efficiency, the lawmaker has also designed conclusive ( or irrebuttable) presumptions. Usual presumptions are characterised by their emphasis on anti-abuse clauses, which oblige taxpayers to bring stronger evidences in lawsuit. For Tax authorities, these are part of a legal arsenal using connected facts against the defensor who carries the burden of proof related to tax monitoring operations in the absence of abuse of rights.

This thesis is focusing on methods of tax optimization of international companies. These international concerns are endeavoring tax minimization. The disparity of the tax systems gives to these companies a possibility of profit and tax base shifting. At first this thesis compares the differences of tax optimization, aggressive tax planning and tax evasion. Among the areas of the optimization methods, which are described in this thesis, belongs tax residention, dividends, royalty payments, transfer pricing and the companies conversions. Because of the aggressive tax optimization are the public budgets shortened by million crowns. As a reaction many of guidelines and plans of international organizations has been written to worsen the possibilities of tax planning. The impacts on public budgets are shown and counted on the model example of fictive international company.

The diploma thesis deals with the motivation factors of a rightful tax return. The aim of the thesis was to identify influence of attitude, subjective norms and behavioural control on a truthfulness of a taxpayer when filling in the tax return. The first part of the thesis is aimed on definition of a tax evasion. Furthermore, this part deals with the causes of tax evasions as well as with ethical point of view on tax evasions in general. The second part of the thesis deals with the indicators of extent and evolution of tax evasions in the Czech Republic and in the European Union. The indicators of tax evasions are the following: shadow economy, tax gap of VAT, tax quota, corruption index and frequency of tax control. The third part includes the results of the questionnaire survey that was realised among the Czech entrepreneurs. The results show the cases of tax evasions that the entrepreneurs may have consider as rightful. Thereafter, using the chi-squared test, the analysis examined whether the attitude of the entrepreneurs towards the tax evasions is influenced by the factors as company seat, annual turnover or number of employees. In several cases, the research confirmed an existence of dependence between attitude of entrepreneurs towards tax evasions and the factors stated above.

Le terme offshore est communément utilisé pour désigner la mise en place d'une entité juridique dans un pays où celle-ci n'exerce aucune activité. Par cette implantation, cette entité pourra bénéficier de certains avantages fiscaux. Or ce mécanisme d'optimisation fiscale peut être contourné de manière illégale. De nombreuses juridictions offshore ont alors été pointées du doigt pour leur manque de transparence et jugées responsables de l'évasion fiscale. Parmi ces centres financiers offshore, Maurice se distingue des autres places financières dans la mesure où elle s'attache à respecter les normes internationales tout en continuant de développer son secteur offshore. Ainsi, l'intérêt de cette thèse est de présenter les caractéristiques de chaque entité offshore et leur fonctionnement afin de comprendre comment elles peuvent être détournées de leur objet initial. Cette présentation passe dans un premier temps par l’analyse des entités offshore et leur exploitation puis dans un second temps leur régulation. On constate alors que la juridiction mauricienne est injustement qualifiée de paradis fiscal et encourent les mêmes risques que les plus grandes places offshore. Maurice a su ainsi concilier ses intérêts en trouvant un équilibre entre l’exploitation économique de son secteur offshore et l’application rigoureuse des normes internationales. / The term offshore is commonly used to refer to the establishment of a legal entity in a country where it has no business.For this implementation, this entity can entain certain tax benefits. But this tax optimization mechanism can be bypassed illegally. Many offshore jurisdictions were then blamed for their lack of transparency and held for tax evasion. Among these offshore financial centers, Mauritius differs from other financial markets as it strives to meet international standards while continuing to develop its offshore sector. Thus, the interest of this thesis is to present the characteristics of each offshore entity and its operations in order to understand how they can be diverted from their original purpose. This presentation is an analysis of each offshore entities, their operations and their regulation. We can found that the Mauritian juridiction is unfairly labeled as tax havens and face the same risks as the largest offshore places. Mauritius has thus reconcile its interests by finding a balance between the economic exploitation of its offshore sector and the strict application of international standards.

Tax evasion is a serious issue that influences governmental revenues, IRS enforcement strategies, and tax policy decisions. While audits are the most effective method of enforcing compliance, they are expensive to conduct and the IRS is only able to audit a fraction of the returns filed each year. This suggests that audits alone are not sufficient to curb the billions of dollars of tax evaded by taxpayers each year and that a better understanding of factors influencing compliance decisions is needed to enable policymakers to craft tax policies that maximize voluntary compliance. Prior research tends to model compliance as economic, environmental, or personal decisions; however, this study models it as a multifaceted decision where these three perspective individually and interactively influence compliance. It is the first to decompose perceived detection risk into two dimensions (selection risk and enforcement risk) and investigates how these two dimensions of risk, decision domains (refund or tax due positions), and three personal factors (mental accounting, narcissism, and proactivity) influence taxpayers’ compliance decisions. I conducted a 2x2 fully crossed experiment involving 331 self-employed taxpayers. These taxpayers have opportunities to evade that employed taxpayers do not. For example, they can earn cash income that is not reported to the IRS by third parties. For self-employed taxpayers (especially those wanting to evade), perceived selection and enforcement risks may be distinctly different depending on a taxpayer’s situation, what they believe they can control, and what risk they are willing to accept. For example, selection risk may be perceived as the greatest risk for those with unreported items on their return, while enforcement risk may be more prominent for those perceiving certain levels of selection risk. Thus, I believe self-employed taxpayers are the most appropriate population to sample from and are likely have reasonable variation in the three personal factors of interest. I find that taxpayers do differentiate between selection and enforcement risks but the difference only manifests for taxpayers in certain decision domains. Taxpayers in a refund position (i.e. conservative mindset) had a greater sensitivity to the form of payment (cash vs. check) and appeared to use this information to make inferences about enforcement risk which was significantly different from their perceptions of selection risk. Conversely, tax due taxpayers (i.e. aggressive mindset) appeared to overlook the form of payment and did not assess these two risks as significantly different. Evaluating the full sample suggests that both selection risk and enforcement risk have a positive influence on compliance. Further, these risks interact to influence compliance. Specifically, compliance is greatest when taxpayers perceive a high likelihood of being selected for an audit and enforcement risk only matters when selection risk is low. This finding is interesting and suggests that avoiding interaction with the IRS is a primary objective of taxpayers. In line with my findings of taxpayers perceiving different risks in refund and tax due positions, the influence of risk perceptions on compliance differed for taxpayers in these positions. Refund taxpayers were influenced by both selection and enforcement risk, similar to the full model; however, tax due taxpayers were only influenced by selection risk and appeared to completely overlook enforcement risk when making their reporting decision. Lastly, the study shows that personal characteristics can also influence compliance in the presence of economic and environmental determinants, but some characteristics only manifest in specific decision domains. Of the three personal characteristics investigated, only mental accounting orientation was a significant predictor for the full sample. When the sample was split by decision domain, only proactivity was a predictor of compliance for refund taxpayers, while only mental accounting orientation was a predictor of compliance for due taxpayers. While I did not find results for narcissism and compliance, my subsequent analysis suggests that individual dimensions of narcissism may be better predictors of compliance than the full measure. Specifically, the exploitation dimension was a significant predictor of compliance for those in a tax due position. This study make several contributions to the accounting and tax literatures. First, this study provides support for a two-construct conceptualization for perceived detection risk that includes both selection and enforcement risks. Second, it answers calls to investigate more comprehensive compliance models and finds economic, environmental, and personal characteristics individually and interactively influence compliance. Third, this study investigates three personal factors that have not been investigated in the tax compliance literature. Finally, this study answers calls for research on self-employed taxpayers and suggests that the IRS will be more successful in increasing compliance by playing on taxpayers’ aversion to being selected for an examination than communicating information on the IRS’ ability to detect noncompliance during an examination.