Taxing hard-to-tax markets

Tax enforcement costs constrain the government s ability to observe economic transactions, giving rise to hard-to-tax (HTT) markets. In these markets transactions are untaxed and consumers are better o¤ than in taxed markets. This paper studies a novel approach to combat evasion in HTT markets: cons...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Arbex, Marcelo Aarestru, Mattos, Enlinson, Ogura, Laudo M.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2014
País:Brasil
Institución:Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV)
Repositorio:Repositório Institucional do FGV (FGV Repositório Digital)
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/11469
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10438/11469
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Taxation
Tax evasion
Hard-to-tax
Economia
Sonegação fiscal
Impostos
Descripción
Sumario:Tax enforcement costs constrain the government s ability to observe economic transactions, giving rise to hard-to-tax (HTT) markets. In these markets transactions are untaxed and consumers are better o¤ than in taxed markets. This paper studies a novel approach to combat evasion in HTT markets: consumer auditing, which rewards consumers for re- questing transaction receipts. We develop a Hotelling-type spatial model of sales taxation to analyze the welfare and distributional e¤ects of the implementation of this policy. We and that consumer auditing allows for a lower tax rate and greater provision of the public good in the economy. We show that this policy not only can enhance welfare, but also equalize utilities of consumers across markets