Tax Design, Information, and Elasticities: Evidence From the French Wealth Tax

Bertrand Garbinti, Jonathan Goupille-Lebret (), Mathilde Munoz, Stefanie Stantcheva () and Gabriel Zucman ()
Additional contact information
Jonathan Goupille-Lebret: ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - Université de Lyon, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research, CESifo - CESifo
Mathilde Munoz: UC Berkeley - University of California [Berkeley] - UC - University of California, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research, NBER - National Bureau of Economic Research [New York] - NBER - The National Bureau of Economic Research
Stefanie Stantcheva: Harvard University, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research, NBER - National Bureau of Economic Research [New York] - NBER - The National Bureau of Economic Research
Gabriel Zucman: PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, UC Berkeley - University of California [Berkeley] - UC - University of California, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research, NBER - National Bureau of Economic Research [New York] - NBER - The National Bureau of Economic Research

World Inequality Lab Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: Using exhaustive administrative wealth and income tax data, we study a French wealth tax reform that scaled back information reporting requirements below a certain wealth threshold. We develop a dynamic bunching approach that permits estimating the average response to the reform, the share of compliers, and the LATE. Reported wealth declines sharply in response to the reform and annual wealth growth rates are on average 20% lower among affected taxpayers. This decline appears due to increased evasion facilitated by the lower reporting requirements, as suggested by the fall in self-reported wealth but the lack of response in third-party-reported labor and capital incomes. By contrast, the elasticities to tax rates estimated are very small and insignificant. This illustrates the critical role of information reporting policies in shaping taxpayers' behavior.

Keywords: H23 H26 WEALTH TAX WEALTH REPORTING TAX AVOIDANCE TAX EVASION BUNCHING; Wealth Tax; Wealth; Reporting; Tax Avoidance; Tax Evasion; Bunching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-06
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04753434v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04753434v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Tax Design, Information, and Elasticities: Evidence From the French Wealth Tax (2024)
Working Paper: Tax Design, Information, and Elasticities: Evidence From the French Wealth Tax (2023)
Working Paper: Tax Design, Information, and Elasticities: Evidence From the French Wealth Tax (2023)
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:hal:wilwps:halshs-04753434

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in World Inequality Lab Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Caroline Bauer ().