Fiscal Anarchy in the U.K.: Modelling Poll Tax Noncompliance

Timothy Besley, Ian Preston and Michael Ridge

No 4498, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The U.K.'s experience with the poll tax reminds us that even in an economy with a relatively well developed detection and legal system, one cannot take tax compliance for granted. The experience of the poll tax provides a unique opportunity to study many dimensions of tax compliance. We model nonpayment rates in a short panel of data on the 366 English local authorities. The transparent observability of individual and aggregate liabilities makes reliable measurement of rates of nonpayment possible. Moreover, these rates rose to unprecedented levels as well as exhibiting considerable variation across authorities. This, together with the variation in local taxes both between districts and over time, creates an ideal opportunity for empirical investigation. Our empirical specification allows us to investigate the determinants of compliance as a function of authority characteristics from census and other geographical data. Moreover, the analysis takes seriously the possibility of neighbourhood influences across authority boundaries. Our empirical results confirm the idea that higher taxes lead to larger compliance problems and that attempts to enforce compliance have a positive effect. Neighbourhood effects on non-compliance were less conspicuous, figuring significantly, if at all, only in the final year.

JEL-codes: H26 H71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1993-10
Note: PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Besley, Timothy, Ian Preston and Michael Ridge. "Fiscal Anarchy In The UK: Modelling Poll Tax Noncompliance," Journal of Public Economics, 1997, v64(2,May), 137-152.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w4498.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Fiscal anarchy in the UK: Modelling poll tax noncompliance (1997)
Working Paper: Fiscal anarchy in the UK: modelling poll tax noncompliance
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:nbr:nberwo:4498

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w4498

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).