Do sin tax hikes spur cheating in interpersonal exchange?

David G. Kenchington, Thomas D. Shohfi, Jared D. Smith and Roger White

Accounting, Organizations and Society, 2022, vol. 96, issue C

Abstract: We study the New York City taxi market to examine whether an excise tax hike on cigarettes corresponds to smoker taxi drivers more frequently cheating their customers. Increased cheating could be motivated by both financial pressures and as a reaction to unfair treatment (as surveyed smokers view cigarette tax hikes as quite unfair). We examine this question using detailed ride-level data where we can identify a rare but fraudulent overcharging technique (cheating) and a subsample of taxi drivers who smoke (affected taxpayers, identified via tickets for smoking in a cab). In difference-in-differences regressions we find that following a cigarette tax hike, taxi drivers who smoke are approximately 1.5 times more likely to cheat customers than other drivers. Our findings are strongest in the subsample of smokers with consistently low earnings.

Keywords: Taxes; Cheating; Fairness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 H23 H30 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361368221000593
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:aosoci:v:96:y:2022:i:c:s0361368221000593

DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2021.101281

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting, Organizations and Society is currently edited by Christopher Chapman

More articles in Accounting, Organizations and Society from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().