IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ren/journl/v6y2014i1p36-62.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Where Has The Currency Gone? And Why? The Underground Economy And Personal Income Tax Evasion In The U.S., 1970-2008

Author

Listed:
  • Richard J. Cebula

    (Jacksonville University)

Abstract

Unaccounted for currency in the U.S. is argued to reflect the presence of widespread income tax evasion. This empirical study seeks to identify determinants of the underground economy in the U.S. in the form of federal personal income tax evasion over the period 1970-2008. In this study, we use the most recent data available on personal income tax evasion, data that are derived from the General Currency Ratio Model and measured in the form of the ratio of unreported AGI (adjusted gross income) to reported AGI. Other studies of federal income tax evasion for the U.S. are dated and do not use data this current. It is found that personal income tax evasion was an increasing function of the maximum marginal federal personal income tax rate, the percentage of federal personal income tax returns characterized by itemized deductions, and unpopular military engagements, in this case, the War in Iraq, and a decreasing function of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (during its first two years of being implemented), the ratio of the tax free interest rate yield on high grade municipals to the interest rate yield on ten year Treasury notes (as a measure of the incentive effect of a better return to tax avoidance, which is legal), and higher audit rates of filed federal income tax returns (as a measure of risk from tax evasion) by IRS personnel.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard J. Cebula, 2014. "Where Has The Currency Gone? And Why? The Underground Economy And Personal Income Tax Evasion In The U.S., 1970-2008," Review of Economic Analysis, Digital Initiatives at the University of Waterloo Library, vol. 6(1), pages 36-52, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:ren:journl:v:6:y:2014:i:1:p:36-62
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.rofea.org/index.php?journal=journal&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=158&path%5B%5D=118
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Feige, Edgar L. & Cebula, Richard, 2011. "America’s unreported economy: measuring the size, growth and determinants of income tax evasion in the U.S," MPRA Paper 34781, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Gary C. Sanger & C. F. Sirmans & Geoffrey K. Turnbull, 1990. "The Effects of Tax Reform on Real Estate: Some Empirical Results," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 66(4), pages 409-424.
    3. Klepper, Steven & Nagin, Daniel & Spurr, Stephen, 1991. "Tax Rates, Tax Compliance, and the Reporting of Long-Term Capital Gains," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 46(2), pages 236-251.
    4. Richard J. Cebula, 2001. "Impact of income-detection technology and other factors on aggregate income tax evasion:the case of the United States," Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 54(219), pages 401-415.
    5. Attiat Ott & Sheila Vegari, 2003. "Tax reform: Chasing the elusive dream," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 31(3), pages 266-282, September.
    6. Cebula, Richard J. & Coombs, Christopher & Yang, Bill Z., 2009. "The Tax Reform Act of 1986: An Assessment in Terms of Tax Compliance Behavior," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 62(2), pages 145-162.
    7. Alm, James & Jackson, Betty & McKee, Michael, 1992. "Institutional Uncertainty and Taxpayer Compliance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 1018-1026, September.
    8. Falkinger, Josef, 1988. "Tax Evasion and Equity: A Theoretical Analysis," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 43(3), pages 388-395.
    9. Spicer, Michael W. & Thomas, J. Everett, 1982. "Audit probabilities and the tax evasion decision: An experimental approach," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 241-245, September.
    10. Richard J. Cebula, 2004. "Income Tax Evasion Revisited: The Impact of Interest Rate Yields on Tax‐Free Municipal Bonds," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 71(2), pages 418-423, October.
    11. Musgrave, Richard A, 1987. "Short of Euphoria," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 59-71, Summer.
    12. Richard J. Cebula, 2004. "Income Tax Evasion Revisited: The Impact of Interest Rate Yields on Tax-Free Municipal Bonds," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 71(2), pages 418-423, October.
    13. Brian Erard & Jonathan Feinstein, 1994. "The Role of Moral Sentiments and Audit Perceptions in Tax Compliance," Carleton Industrial Organization Research Unit (CIORU) 94-03, Carleton University, Department of Economics.
    14. Baldry, Jonathan C, 1987. "Income Tax Evasion and the Tax Schedule: Some Experimental Results," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 42(3), pages 357-383.
    15. James R. Barth, 1991. "The Great Savings and Loan Debacle," Books, American Enterprise Institute, number 918256, September.
    16. Caballe, Jordi & Panades, Judith, 1997. "Tax Evasion and Economic Growth," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 52(3-4), pages 318-340.
    17. Richard J Cebula & John P Cook & Tarek A Issa, 2007. "Economics, Wars and Scandals: Their Impacts on the US Public Approval Ratings of its President Over the Long Run," The IUP Journal of Applied Economics, IUP Publications, vol. 0(3), pages 31-39, May.
    18. Clotfelter, Charles T, 1983. "Tax Evasion and Tax Rates: An Analysis of Individual Returns," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 65(3), pages 363-373, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wei Han, 2020. "The analysis on Chinese e-commerce tax losses based on the perspective of information asymmetry," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 651-677, September.
    2. Ekaterina N. Nevzorova & Anna P. Kireenko & Roman A. Sklyarov, 2017. "Bibliometric Analisis of the Literature on Tax Evasion in Russia and Foreign Countries," Journal of Tax Reform, Graduate School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal University, vol. 3(2), pages 115-130.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Richard J. Cebula, 2014. "The underground economy in the U.S.A.: preliminary new evidence on the impact of income tax rates (and other factors) on aggregate tax evasion 1975-2008," PSL Quarterly Review, Economia civile, vol. 67(271), pages 451-481.
    2. Richard J. Cebula, 2013. "New and Current Evidence on Determinants of Aggregate Federal Personal Income Tax Evasion in the United States," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(3), pages 701-731, July.
    3. Boylan, Robert & Cebula, Richard & Foley, Maggie & Izard, Douglass, 2014. "Implication of Recent Federal Personal Income Tax Increases for Income Tax Evasion, Tax Revenues, and Budget Deficits," MPRA Paper 68405, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Cebula, Richard & Foley, Maggie, 2010. "Personal Income Tax Evasion Determinants Revisited: An Exploratory Study Using Newly Available Data," MPRA Paper 52028, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Cebula, Richard J., 2011. "Aggregate Income Tax Evasion: Empirical Results Using new IRS Data for the U.S. - L’evasione aggregata del reddito: risultati empirici ottenuti utilizzando i nuovi dati IRS per gli USA," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 64(4), pages 423-443.
    6. Feige, Edgar L. & Cebula, Richard, 2011. "America’s Underground Economy: Measuring the Size, Growth and Determinants of Income Tax Evasion in the U.S," MPRA Paper 29672, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Cebula, Richard J. & Coombs, Christopher & Yang, Bill Z., 2009. "The Tax Reform Act of 1986: An Assessment in Terms of Tax Compliance Behavior," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 62(2), pages 145-162.
    8. Feige, Edgar L. & Cebula, Richard, 2011. "America’s unreported economy: measuring the size, growth and determinants of income tax evasion in the U.S," MPRA Paper 34781, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. R.J. Cebula, 1998. "Determinants of aggregate income-tax-evasion behaviour: the case of US," BNL Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 51(206), pages 273-290.
    10. Richard J. Cebula, 2001. "Impact of income-detection technology and other factors on aggregate income tax evasion:the case of the United States," BNL Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 54(219), pages 401-415.
    11. Richard Cebula & Chris Paul, 2000. "The pedagogy of tax evasion: Its extent and its determinants," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 6(4), pages 710-721, November.
    12. Bayer, Ralph-C & Sutter, Matthias, 2009. "The excess burden of tax evasion--An experimental detection-concealment contest," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(5), pages 527-543, July.
    13. Cebula, Richard, 1996. "An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Government Tax and Auditing Policies on the Size of the Underground Economy: The Case of the United States, 1973-94," MPRA Paper 49810, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Cebula, Richard, 2010. "An Empirical Analysis of Determinants of Recent Federal Personal Income Tax Evasion in the U.S," MPRA Paper 53205, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Çule, Monika & Fulton, Murray, 2009. "Business culture and tax evasion: Why corruption and the unofficial economy can persist," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(3), pages 811-822, December.
    16. Richard J. Cebula & Maggie Foley, 2014. "Teaching the economics of income tax evasion," Chapters, in: Franklin G. Mixon & Richard J. Cebula (ed.), New Developments in Economic Education, chapter 12, pages 133-139, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Franklin G. Mixon & Richard J. Cebula (ed.), 2014. "New Developments in Economic Education," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 15538.
    18. Cebula, Richard & Toma, Michael, 2004. "Do Budget Deficits Reduce Household Taxpayer Compliance? Preliminary Evidence Using the Feige Data," MPRA Paper 56739, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Cebula, Richard & Smith, Heather, 2008. "Teaching Political Economy: On the Economics Significance of the Public's Job Approval Rating of the President," MPRA Paper 56785, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. James, Simon & Edwards, Alison, 2010. "An annotated bibliography of tax compliance and tax compliance costs," MPRA Paper 26106, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Missing Currency; Tax Evasion; Incentives; Disincentives;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ren:journl:v:6:y:2014:i:1:p:36-62. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Dr. Jerzy (Jurek) Konieczny (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.rcfea.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.