Honesty and Evasion in the Tax Compliance Game

Brian Erard () and Jonathan Feinstein ()

RAND Journal of Economics, 1994, vol. 25, issue 1, 1-19

Abstract: Conventional models of tax compliance emphasize that taxpayers make strategic tax reports, underreporting income to the extent that this behavior is functionally rewarded. In contrast to this view, considerable empirical evidence suggests that many taxpayers are inherently honest, reporting truthfully regardless of the incentive to cheat. In this article we build a game-theoretic model of tax compliance that includes both honest and potentially dishonest taxpayers. We show that including honest taxpayers significantly alters the model, leading to much improved empirical predictions and somewhat different and novel policy implications.

Date: 1994
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (174)

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0741-6261%2819942 ... O%3B2-Y&origin=repec full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.

Related works:
Working Paper: Honesty and Evasion in the Tax Compliance Game (1994)
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:rje:randje:v:25:y:1994:i:spring:p:1-19

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://editorialexp ... i-bin/rje_online.cgi

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in RAND Journal of Economics from The RAND Corporation
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().