This paper investigates how tax rates and tax enforcement jointly impact fiscal capacity in low-income countries. We study a policy experiment in the D.R. Congo that randomly assigned 38,028 property owners to the status quo tax rate or to a rate reduction. This variation in tax liabilities...

In the context of collecting property taxes from 13432 households in a district of Lima (Peru), we investigate whether prioritized enforcement can improve the effective use of limited enforcement capacity. We randomly assign households to two treatment arms: one replicating the city's usual...

We study the extent to which ML techniques can be used to improve tax auditing efficiency using administrative data, without the need of randomized audits. Using Italy's population data on sole proprietorship tax returns, audits and their outcome, we develop a new approach to address the so...

We study behavioral responses to personal wealth taxes in Colombia. We utilize tax microdata from 1993 to 2016 linked with the leaked Panama Papers to investigate offshoring to the country's key tax havens. We leverage variation from discrete jumps in tax liability and four major reforms to the...

We study a French wealth tax reform that starkly reduced the information some taxpayers must report to the tax authority. Using a new dynamic bunching approach we estimate the average response to the reform, the share of compliers, and the local average treatment effect. The annual wealth growth...

This paper uses account-level information, reported to the IRS by foreign financial institutions under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), to produce new evidence on the foreign financial wealth of U.S. households. We find that U.S. taxpayers hold around $4 trillion in foreign...

The U.S. Supreme Court decision in the landmark 2018 Wayfair case greatly improved state governments' ability to enforce collection of sales taxes on a destination basis. This has reduced state tax competition with an essentially-untaxed internet, but has brought traditional cross-border...

Profit shifting by multinational corporations is thought to reduce tax revenue around the world. We analyze the introduction of standard regulations aimed at limiting profit shifting. Using administrative tax and customs data from Chile in difference-in-differences event-study designs, we find...

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...

An important but poorly understood form of firm tax evasion arises from the use of "ghost firms"--fake firms that issue fraudulent receipts so that their clients can claim false deductions. We provide a unique window into this global phenomenon using transaction-level tax data from Ecuador....