This paper examines corporations' actions, and statements about actions, following the tax law change known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Specifically, we examine four different outcomes--bonuses (or other actions that benefit workers), announcements of new investments, share repurchases,...

We examine two Pakistani programs to explore the role of deterrence as well as social and psychological factors in the tax compliance behavior of agents. In the first of these programs, the government began revealing income tax paid by every taxpayer in the country. The second program publicly...

This paper addresses the modern optimal tax progressivity literature, which clarifies the key role of the behavioral response to taxation and accounts for the incomes of the superrich being qualitatively different than others. Some may be "superstars," for whom small differences in talent are...

Penalties for tax evasion are typically financial, but many jurisdictions also utilize collateral sanctions that deny access to some government-provided service. To learn about the effectiveness of such penalties, we examine a U.S. policy restricting passport access for taxpayers with...

This paper evaluates proposals for an annual wealth tax. While a dozen OECD countries levied wealth taxes in the recent past, now only three retain them, with only Switzerland raising a comparable fraction of revenue as recent proposals for a US wealth tax. Studies of these taxes sometimes, but...

This paper models the impact of the tax system and GAAP on the real and financial reporting decisions of corporations. It provides a first step toward joint evaluation of taxation and financial reporting in the standard economic analyses of corporate behavior. The key finding is that value...

For most parameter values, increased randomness about how much taxable income an auditor would assess leads to higher reported income and more revenue, When reducing randomness is costly, optimality requires some randomness in assessed taxable Income. Even if reducing randomness g costless,...

We provide a unified analysis of taxation and taxpayer education when individuals have an incomplete understanding of a complex tax system. The analysis is independent of whether income is earned legitimately, or by avoiding or evading taxes. In this sense, learning about tax minimization...

Married couples filing a joint return put the male name first 88.1% of the time in tax year 2020, down from 97.3% in 1996. The man's name is more likely to go first the larger is the fraction of the couple's allocable income that goes to him, and the older is the couple. Based on state averages,...

We develop a positive model of multinational firm behavior and analyze a firm's incentive to transfer an intellectual property (IP) right of uncertain value offshore ex ante, i.e. before its success or failure is realized. Our analysis highlights two major aspects of this decision. First, an...