契约理论框架下的企业逃税问题研究

本文以契约理论为切入点对企业逃税行为进行分析,通过在企业所有者和经营者合谋逃税活动中引入线性激励的"可自我执行的协议",构建了一个逃税模型来研究企业逃税主体的决策行为。结果表明:经理人风险态度、逃税边际成本和逃税风险是影响纳税人逃税行为决策的重要因素。     

The excess burden of tax evasion—An experimental detection-concealment contest

Tax evasion may cause social welfare losses due to the incentives of taxpayers to invest in the concealment and of tax authorities to invest in the detection of tax evasion. Reducing the investment of both parties at the same time would then lead to a Pareto improvement. Given that concealment and detection costs are hardly measurable in reality, we show in a controlled laboratory experiment that the welfare losses from a concealment-detection contest depend positively on the prevailing tax rate, but not on the penalty which is imposed in case of detected tax evasion. Hence, policy makers who are concerned about socially inefficient concealment and enforcement costs should focus on tax rates rather than penalty rates.     

Dynamic Tax Evasion with Habit Formation in Consumption*

We model the optimal intertemporal decision of an agent who chooses tax evasion and consumption, over an infinite lifetime horizon, where consumption is driven by habits. We find the following: (i) tax evaders reduce consumption in the early stages of habit accumulation and increase it over time; (ii) habit formation has a dampening effect on tax evasion; (iii) neglecting tax evasion can lead to habit overestimation; (iv) the effect of the tax rate on tax evasion is ambiguous; (v) heavy fines are more efficient than frequent controls in reducing tax evasion.     

Tax Evasion,Corruption and Tax Loopholes

This paper addresses tax loopholes that allow firms to exploit borderline cases between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion. In general, tax loopholes are detrimental to a revenue‐maximizing government. This may change in the presence of corruption in the tax administration. Tax loopholes may serve as a separating mechanism that helps governments maximize revenues and curb corruption, which may explain why developing countries only gradually close loopholes in their tax codes.     

Fraudulent collection of unemployment benefits : A theoretical analysis with reference to income tax evasion

The harshest abusers of the unemployment insurance program are those employed who collect benefits while working. This paper analyzes fraudulent claiming behavior and optimal deterrence policy under two alternative penalty schemes, commonly used in tax evasion analyses: one relates punishment to the magnitude of the dishonesty, whereas the other relates punishment to the amount of illegal returns. Two exclusive features of fraudulent benefit claiming are given special attention: the requirement to report at a labor exchange to demonstrate availability for work, and the need to serve a waiting period before benefits can be collected.     

Wage endogeneity,tax evasion,and optimal nonlinear income taxation

This paper studies the interaction between tax evasion and wage endogeneity within a Mirrleesian optimal tax framework. It characterizes the optimal marginal income tax rates on the skilled and the unskilled workers and the optimal amount of resources to be spent on deterring tax evasion. It shows that tax evasion weakens the incentives for the government to manipulate the marginal tax rates for the purpose of exploiting general equilibrium effects on wages. Moreover, the extent of this depends on the curvature of the evasion cost function. It also argues that marginal income tax rates are likely to be higher when the government attempts to deter evasion.     

Disentangling managerial incentives from a dynamic perspective: The role of stock grants

We analyse the optimal contract between a risk‐averse manager and the initial shareholders in a two‐period model where the manager's investment effort, carried out in period 1, and his or her current effort, carried out in period 2, both impact the second‐period profit, so that it may be difficult to disentangle the incentives for these two types of effort. We show that stock grants play different roles according to whether the signal of investment effort is less noisy, or noisier, than that of current effort. We determine simultaneously the optimal stock grants and the optimal restrictions on sales of shares.     

Tax havens,income shifting,and redistributive taxation

This paper investigates the effects of tax havens on nonhaven countries’ redistributive policies. We consider that a nonhaven country contains individuals with different labor productivities. A tax is imposed on the income, and the revenues are evenly distributed. The tax rate is determined by majority voting, which reflects the median voter’s preferences. The presence of havens gives rise to the mobility of tax bases, which may increase the nonhaven country’s tax rate in two ways. First, it leads to a median voter with a lower productivity; second, it may enlarge the marginal tax revenue from raising the tax rate. In addition, we find that a stricter antihavens regulation may lower the tax rate. We further show that income shifting is likely to reduce the amount of the transfers. The case of tax evasion is also taken into consideration.     

How does stock liquidity affect corporate tax noncompliance? Evidence from China✰

Using an exogenous shock that drastically increased the liquidity of stocks listed in China, we find robust evidence that higher liquidity significantly increases the overall level of tax noncompliance. The increase is more substantial when controlling shareholders own more shares, and diversion for private benefits is less complementary to tax noncompliance. Liquidity has no significant impact on tax evasion—the most aggressive and risky tax noncompliance—and at the higher ends of the tax noncompliance distribution. The positive and significant effects are observed only at lower levels of tax noncompliance. We attribute the weaker impact of liquidity on aggressive tax noncompliance to diversion being more complementary to higher-risk tax noncompliance.     

Firm’s tax evasion in a principal-agent model with self-protection

Gatekeepers have an increasing role in taxation and regulation. Whereas burdening them with legal liability for misconducts that benefit those who resort to their services actually discourages wrongdoings—as will be clarified in the article—an alienation effect can also arise. The gatekeeper might become more interested in covering up the illegal behavior. This article studies the problem with respect to tax evasion by firms in a principal-agent framework. It highlights the role of legal rules pertaining to liability for tax evasion in shaping the choices of the parties, as concealment costs vary according to whether the risk-neutral principal or the riskaverse agent is held responsible when tax evasion is detected. The main result of the analysis is that there is a simple ex post test that can be carried out to infer whether harnessing the agent was socially beneficial.     

Optimal taxes on wealth and consumption in the presence of tax evasion

This article incorporates tax evasion into an optimum taxation framework with individuals differing in earning abilities and initial wealth. We find that despite the possibility of its evasion a tax on initial wealth should supplement the optimal nonlinear income tax, given a positive correlation between initial wealth and earning abilities. Further, even if income and initial wealth are taxed optimally, it is still desirable to levy a tax on commodities, though it can be evaded as well. Thus, our result provides a rationale for a comprehensive tax system. Optimal tax rates on commodities differ in general, however for the special case of a uniform evasion technology equal rates are optimal if preferences are homothetic and weakly separable.     

Dissertation abstract: “Essays in applied economics on the intervention of a third player in agency relationships”

Agency theory has established that appropriate incentives can reconcile the diverging interests of the principal and the agent. Focusing on three applications, this dissertation evaluates the empirical relevance of these results when a third party interacts with the primary contract. The analyses provided rely on either laboratory or natural experiments. First, corruption is analyzed as a two-contract situation: a delegation contract between a Principal and an Agent and a corruption pact concluded between this Agent and a third player, called Briber. A survey of the recent microeconomic literature on corruption first highlights how corruption behavior results from the properties of those two agreements. We thereafter show that the Agent faces a conflict in reciprocities due to those two conflicting agreements. The resulting delegation effect, supported by observed behavior in our three-player experimental game, could account for the deterrence effect of wages on corruption. Second, health care is governed by contradictory objectives: patients are mainly concerned with the health provided, whereas containing health care costs is the primary goal of health care administrators. We provide further insights into the ability of incentives to balance these two competing objectives. In this matter, our theoretical and econometric analysis evaluates how a new mixed compensation scheme, introduced in Quebec in 1999 as an alternative to fee-for-services, has affected physicians’ practice patterns. Free switching is shown to be an essential feature of the reform, since it implements screening between physicians. Finally, the demand for underground work departs from the traditional Beckerian approach to illegal behavior, due to the dependence of benefits from illegality on competitors’ behavior. We set up a theoretical model in which the demand for underground work from all producers competing on the same output market is analyzed simultaneously. We first show that competition drastically undermines the individual benefits of tax evasion. At equilibrium, each firm nonetheless chooses evasion with a positive probability, strictly lower than one. This Bertrand curse could then account for the “tax evasion puzzle” i.e. the overprediction of evasion in models that ignore market interactions. We thereafter show that allowing firms to denounce competitors’ evasion is not likely to solve this curse—by providing a credible threat against price cuts, it fosters illegal work. Empirical evidence from a laboratory experiment confirms these predictions. Without denunciation, experimental firms often choose evasion whereas evasion benefits are canceled out by competition. When introduced, denunciation is rarely used by firms, but the threat makes evasion profitable. JEL Classification K42, I18, D21, C25, C91     

Trading Off Tax Distortion and Tax Evasion

Income tax evasion is modeled as a risky activity and integrated into a standard optimal tax problem in which there is a good whose sales are observable. If the penalty for evasion is proportional to the tax evaded (the Yitzhaki scheme), the optimal tax structure is unaffected by evasion. If the penalty is proportional to unreported income (the Allingham–Sandmo scheme), it is efficient to tax both the observable good and income. The cost of the risk of tax evasion is traded off against the distortion from taxing the observable good. For equal penalties, Allingham/Sandmo is more efficient than Yitzhaki.     

The evasion of fiscal and labor regulations: Firm behavior and optimal tax policy

Firms face many fiscal and labor regulations, but they may evade these legal requirements in several different ways. We develop a model that captures these two types of evasion decisions and unlike existing literature assume firms can evade labor regulations independently from income tax responsibilities. We characterize firms’ entry and evasion behavior and find that the design of the tax system can generate both positive and negative correlations between evasion decisions consistent with what is observed empirically. We then characterize optimal government policies given the firms’ decisions. We obtain intuitive optimal tax rules that highlight the trade‐offs the government faces when firms have multiple margins on which to evade.     

The political economy of contributive pensions in developing countries

This paper sheds light on the role of public institutions as a way to reduce tax evasion through a close link between payroll taxation and pension benefits. We use a political economy model in which agents have the possibility to hide part of their earnings in order to avoid taxation and, where the public system is more efficient in providing annuitized pension benefits than the private sector. We show that in the absence of evasion costs, agents are indifferent to the tax rate level as they can always perfectly adapt compliance so as to face their preferred effective tax rate. There is unanimity in favour of the maximum tax rate and, the public pension system is found to be partially contributive in order to increase tax compliance and thus the resources collected. This, in turn, enables higher redistribution toward the worst-off agents. When evasion costs are introduced, perfect substitutability between compliance and taxation breaks down. At the majority-voting equilibrium, individuals at the bottom of the income distribution who are in favour of more redistribution, and those at the top who want to transfer more resources to the old age, form a coalition against middle-income agents, in favour of high tax rates. In addition to the previous tax base argument, the optimal level of the Bismarkian pillar is now chosen so as to account for political support.     

Tax Evasion and Limited Liability

Andreoni, Erard, and Feinstein (1998) suggest that imposing very high penalties for tax evasion is not possible under bankruptcy or limited liability constraints. In this paper, we complement their suggestion by showing that, in the presence of these constraints, imposing very high penalties can make an economy Pareto worse‐off. This result helps provide a further insight into why governments typically do not set very high penalties for tax evasion in practice. Implications for optimal deterrence policies in the context of tax evasion are also explored.     

PUBLIC INVESTMENT,TAX EVASION,AND THE WELFARE EFFECTS OF A TARIFF REFORM

Contrary to the case considered in literature, the experience of developing countries indicates that the tariff reforms have not been revenue neutral due to the heavy dependence of developing countries on trade taxes and pervasive tax evasion. In contrast to the plausibility of a welfare loss shown by the current literature, when the adverse effect of the loss of tariff revenue on public investment is factored in, the welfare outcome of the tariff reforms of past few decades turns out to be much more pessimistic. The constraints imposed by tariff dependence and tax evasion imply that future tariff reforms in these countries should be undertaken after strengthening their domestic tax system and augmenting the ability of their governments to fight tax evasion. For countries of sub‐Saharan Africa, where such reforms are likely to be concentrated, this would need planning and capacity building over a longer time horizon. (JEL D61, D62, F13, H26)     

Tax evasion,social norms,and economic growth

We propose a theoretical model to account for the negative relationship between tax evasion and economic development. More precisely, we integrate tax morale into a dynamic OLG model of tax evasion. Tax morale is modeled as a social norm for tax compliance. We show that accounting for such nonpecuniary costs of evasion may explain (a) why the share of evaded taxes over GDP decreases when countries grow and (b) that tax morale is positively correlated with the level of GDP per capita. Finally, a higher tax rate increases aggregate evasion and the number of evaders when taxpayers decisions are interdependent.     

Anticorruption reforms,tax evasion,and the role of harassment

We examine the impact of anticorruption reforms on tax evasion when corruption and potentially harassment are endemic among tax auditors. We find that the threat of harassment may counterintuitively boost the impact of such anticorruption reforms on tax evasion and also eliminate corruption. Specifically, a moderate anticorruption policy can discontinuously reduce tax evasion to a level even below that under no corruption. Further strengthening of such policy can nonetheless prove counterproductive and increase tax evasion. On the contrary, in the absence of harassment, a moderate anticorruption reform induces higher tax evasion and sustenance of bribery. In this case, only a large reform can reduce tax evasion and eliminate corruption.