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Experimental Evidence on the Relationship between Tax Evasion Opportunities and Labor Supply

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Listed author(s):
  • Philipp Doerrenberg

    (University of Cologne)

  • Denvil Duncan

    (Indiana University)

Abstract

We examine the extent to which labor supply elasticities with respect to tax rates depend on access to evasion opportunities. It is observed that some types of workers have the opportunity to hide their income while others do not have such opportunities, e.g. due to being subject to third-party-reporting. We first set up a theoretical model to formally show that labor supply responses depend on access to evasion. The model is then tested in a lab experiment in which all participants undertake a real-effort task over several rounds. Subjects face a tax rate, which varies across rounds and are required to pay taxes on earned income. The treatment group is given the opportunity to underreport income while the control group is not. We find zero labor effort responses to tax rates in the control group and positive statistically significant adjustments in the treatment group; suggesting that both groups indeed react differently to taxes.

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Paper provided by Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences in its series Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series with number 03-10.

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Date of creation: 18 Sep 2012
Handle: RePEc:cgr:cgsser:03-10
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Keywords: Tax Evasion; Labor Supply; Taxable Income; Lab Experiment; Taxes;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
  • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor

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Cited by:

  1. Lise Vesterlund, 2015. "The Effect of Incentives on Real Effort: Evidence from the Slider Task," Working Paper 5661, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh.
  2. Christoph Engel, 2016. "Experimental Criminal Law. A Survey of Contributions from Law, Economics and Criminology," Working Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2016_07, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
  3. Victoria Prowse & David Gill, 2009. "A Novel Computerized Real Effort Task Based on Sliders," Economics Series Working Papers 435, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
  4. Doerrenberg, Philipp & Duncan, Denvil & Zeppenfeld, Christopher, 2015. "Circumstantial risk: Impact of future tax evasion and labor supply opportunities on risk exposure," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 85-100.
  5. Schröder, Melanie & Schmitt, Norma & Mantei, Britta & Brünn, Claudia, 2014. "Social Norms or Income Taxation - What Drives Couple's Labor Supply? Experimental Evidence," Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100375, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
  6. Kristoffer Berg & Thor O. Thoresen, 2016. "Problematic response margins in the estimation of the elasticity of taxable income," Discussion Papers 851, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
  7. Kessler, Judd B. & Norton, Michael I., 2016. "Tax aversion in labor supply," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 15-28.
  8. Schröder, Melanie & Schmitt, Norma & Heynemann, Britta & Brünn, Claudia, 2013. "Income Taxation and Labor Supply: An Experiment on Couple's Work Effort," Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79735, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
  9. Pietro Battiston & Denvil Duncan & Simona Gamba & Alessandro Santoro, 2016. "The Italian Blitz: a natural experiment on audit publicity and tax compliance," FBK-IRVAPP Working Papers 2016-10, Research Institute for the Evaluation of Public Policies (IRVAPP), Bruno Kessler Foundation.
  10. Doerrenberg, Philipp, 2015. "Does the use of tax revenue matter for tax compliance behavior?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 30-34.
  11. Melanie Schröder & Norma Burow, 2016. "Couple's Labor Supply, Taxes, and the Division of Housework in a Gender-Neutral Lab," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1593, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
  12. Doerrenberg, Philipp & Duncan, Denvil, 2014. "Tax Incidence in the Presence of Tax Evasion," IZA Discussion Papers 8137, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  13. Koch, Christian & Müller, Cornelius, 2015. "Anticipated Tax Amnesties and Tax Compliance: An Experimental Study," Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112991, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
  14. European Commission, 2013. "Tax reforms in EU Member States - Tax policy challenges for economic growth and fiscal sustainability – 2013 Report," Taxation Papers 38, Directorate General Taxation and Customs Union, European Commission.

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