Experimental Evidence on the Relationship between Tax Evasion Opportunities and Labor Supply

Philipp Doerrenberg and Denvil Duncan

No 6914, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: Motivated by the observation that access to evasion opportunities is distributed heterogeneously across the labor market, this paper examines the extent to which labor supply elasticities with respect to tax rates depend on such evasion opportunities. We first discuss the channels through which access to evasion affects labor supply responses and then set up a laboratory experiment in which all participants undertake a real-effort task over several rounds. Subjects face a tax rate, which varies across rounds and are required to pay taxes on earned income. The treatment group is given the opportunity to underreport income while the control group is not. We find that participants in the treatment group have significantly larger effort responses to changes in the net-of-tax rate than participants in the control group; suggesting that both groups indeed react differently to taxes.

Keywords: lab experiment; taxable income; labor supply; tax evasion; taxes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H21 H24 H26 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2012-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-exp, nep-iue and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - substantially revised version published in: European Economic Review, 2014, 68, 48–70

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Related works:
Journal Article: Experimental evidence on the relationship between tax evasion opportunities and labor supply (2014)
Working Paper: Experimental Evidence on the Relationship between Tax Evasion Opportunities and Labor Supply (2013)
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