IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v42y2010i3p351-368.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The distribution of UK personal income tax compliance costs

Author

Listed:
  • Laurence Mathieu
  • Catherine Waddams Price
  • Francis Antwi

Abstract

Governments are committed to reducing the regulatory burden on business and individuals, while at the same time transferring many tasks from bureaucrats. One such example is tax compliance where self-assessment (SA) has raised concerns that such transfers may place a particularly heavy burden on lower income and elderly taxpayers. This is the first study since its introduction into the UK in 1996 of the regulatory burden, which SA imposes on individuals. We identify both the total compliance burden and its components for individuals who might be expected to incur high compliance costs because they pay tax on nonbusiness employment income. We use a specially designed questionnaire and find that within this group the burden seems to have increased by less than 25%. Compliance costs are regressive, but do not impinge disproportionately on the elderly. The compliance burden is determined by income, occupation, education (but not specifically in accounting subjects) and difficulty in attending to tax affairs, indicating some possibilities for reducing these compliance costs.

Suggested Citation

  • Laurence Mathieu & Catherine Waddams Price & Francis Antwi, 2010. "The distribution of UK personal income tax compliance costs," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(3), pages 351-368.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:42:y:2010:i:3:p:351-368
    DOI: 10.1080/00036840701604370
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036840701604370
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036840701604370?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Smith, Adam, 1977. "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226763743 edited by Cannan, Edwin, September.
    2. Smith, Adam, 1776. "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number smith1776.
    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. Naoto Jinji & Yoshihiro Mizoguchi, 2016. "Optimal Rules of Origin with Asymmetric Compliance Costs under International Duopoly," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 1-24, March.
    2. Sebastian Eichfelder & François Vaillancourt, 2014. "Tax Compliance Costs: A Review of Cost Burdens and Cost Structures," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 210(3), pages 111-148, September.

    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. Carbonnier Cl´ement, 2014. "The incidence of non-linear consumption taxes," Научный результат. Серия «Экономические исследования», CyberLeninka;Федеральное государственное автономное образовательное учреждение высшего образования «Белгородский государственный национальный исследовательский университет», issue 1, pages 5-18.
    2. Hartmann, Dominik & Guevara, Miguel R. & Jara-Figueroa, Cristian & Aristarán, Manuel & Hidalgo, César A., 2017. "Linking Economic Complexity, Institutions, and Income Inequality," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 75-93.
    3. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:6:y:2007:i:38:p:1-14 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. David A. Green, 2015. "Chasing after “good jobs.” Do they exist and does it matter if they do?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(4), pages 1215-1265, November.
    5. Gabriel Fagan & Vito Gaspar & Peter McAdam, 2014. "Kant’s Endogenous Growth Mechanism," School of Economics Discussion Papers 0214, School of Economics, University of Surrey.
    6. Andreas Psimopoulos, 2020. "Forecasting Economic Recessions Using Machine Learning:An Empirical Study in Six Countries," South-Eastern Europe Journal of Economics, Association of Economic Universities of South and Eastern Europe and the Black Sea Region, vol. 18(1), pages 40-99.
    7. Tariq Rahman, 2022. "Landscapes of rizq: Mediating worldly and otherworldly in Lahore's speculative real estate market," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(2), pages 297-308, June.
    8. Muhammad Ali & Uwe Cantner, 2020. "Economic diversification and human development in Europe," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 10(2), pages 211-235, June.
    9. Stephan Barthel & John Parker & Henrik Ernstson, 2015. "Food and Green Space in Cities: A Resilience Lens on Gardens and Urban Environmental Movements," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(7), pages 1321-1338, May.
    10. Sue Konzelmann & Frank Wilkinson & Marc Fovargue-Davies & Duncan Sankey, 2009. "Governance, Regulation and Financial Market Instability: The Implciations for Policy," Working Papers wp392, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    11. Charles M. A. Clark, 2021. "Editor’s Introduction: Economics and the Option for the Poor," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 80(4), pages 1051-1059, September.
    12. Bellemare, Marc F. & Barrett, Christopher B., 2003. "An Asset Risk Theory of Share Tenancy," Working Papers 127203, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    13. White, Reilly & Marinakis, Yorgos & Islam, Nazrul & Walsh, Steven, 2020. "Is Bitcoin a currency, a technology-based product, or something else?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    14. Ashraf, Junaid & Uddin, Shahzad, 2016. "New public management, cost savings and regressive effects: A case from a less developed country," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 18-33.
    15. Çağatay Bircan & Ralph De Haas, 2020. "The Limits of Lending? Banks and Technology Adoption across Russia," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(2), pages 536-609.
    16. Adamson, Jordan, 2020. "Political institutions, resources, and war: Theory and evidence from ancient Rome," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    17. Figge, Frank & Hahn, Tobias & Barkemeyer, Ralf, 2014. "The If, How and Where of assessing sustainable resource use," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 274-283.
    18. Hu, Yue & Liu, Chang & Peng, Jiangang, 2021. "Financial inclusion and agricultural total factor productivity growth in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 68-82.
    19. Balland, Pierre-Alexandre & Broekel, Tom & Diodato, Dario & Giuliani, Elisa & Hausmann, Ricardo & O'Clery, Neave & Rigby, David, 2022. "Reprint of The new paradigm of economic complexity," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(8).
    20. Timothy Johnson, 2015. "Reciprocity as a Foundation of Financial Economics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(1), pages 43-67, September.
    21. Gilles, Robert P. & Pesce, Marialaura & Diamantaras, Dimitrios, 2020. "The provision of collective goods through a social division of labour," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 287-312.

    More about this item

    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:taf:applec:v:42:y:2010:i:3:p:351-368. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    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.