This paper examined the nexus between tax havens and illicit financial flow of funds with particular reference to capital flows out African continent. Qualitative content analysis method supported empirical data obtained from multilateral agencies was used for study. The dataset covered forty-four (44) countries period 2005-2014 respectively. Results revealed that absence political will, weak i...

Approximately 16.7% of output in high-income OECD countries is produced informally. Across these countries, the size of the informal economy is positively related to tax rates and negatively related to governance quality. While existing models of the informal economy mostly focus on developing countries, this paper studies the mechanisms behind the informal economy in high-income countries. I b...

Economists agree that accounting specialists are helpful in avoiding taxes. We argue that such help can often be called sophisticated evasion. We analyze it in a game of incomplete information played by tax authority, corporate taxpayers and accounting specialist. When sophisticated evasion is very common, marginal changes in enforcement are not e¤ective, so radical measures are needed for impr...

This paper evaluates the effects of a fall in payroll taxes on employment and wages in the presence of high labor informality. For that purpose, the paper examines a recently approved tax reform in Colombia especially targeted to promote labor formality. The model suggests that the reform would increase total employment by between 0.3 to 0.5 percent and formal employment by between 3.4 to 3.7 p...

We examine the validity of a new system of taxation called lottery receipts in China theoretically and empirically. Tax collection is difficult as the Chinese government difficultly monitors the actual economic dealings. To bring out the private information on transaction known only to a seller and a buyer, the government has set up a lottery receipt system which has been tried out in many area...

The standard expected utility (EUT) model of tax evasion predicts that evasion is decreasing in the marginal tax rate (the Yitzhaki puzzle). Recent literature shows cases in which incorporating prospect theory (PT) does and does not overturn the Puzzle. In a general environment that nests both PT and EUT preferences, we provide a detailed study of how the elements of PT affect the Puzzle. PT do...

In the last decade, there are strong indications of an expansion in shadow economic activities in the Netherlands Antilles, which is caused by the high tax burden and high unemployment. This paper attempts to measure the size of the shadow economy of the Netherlands Antilles using two distinct estimation methods: the direct and indirect approach. Both methods produced similar results, showing t...

Investments in fiscal capacity—economic institutions for tax compliance—are an important feature of economic development. This paper develops a dynamic model to study the evolution of over time. We contrast a social planner’s investment path with politically feasible paths. Three types of states emerge in the long run: a commoninterest state where public resources are devoted to public goods, a...

Our survey of private manufacturing firms finds the size of hidden “unofficial” activity to be much larger in Russia and Ukraine than in Poland, Slovakia and Romania. A comparison of cross-country averages shows that managers in Russia and Ukraine face higher effective tax rates, worse bureaucratic corruption, greater incidence of mafia protection, and have less faith in the court system. Our f...

Although developing countries face high levels of income inequality, they rely more on consumption taxes, which tend to be linear and are less effective for redistribution than a non-linear income tax. One explanation for this pattern is that the consumption taxes are generally more enforceable in these economies. This paper studies the optimal combination of a linear consumption tax, with a no...