Tax Overpayments, Tax Evasion, and Book-Tax Differences

A strictly risk-averse manager makes joint decisions on a firm's tax payments and book profit declarations according to accounting standards. It is analysed how the incentives to overpay or evade taxes and to inflate book profits are influenced by (1) the composition of the manager's remuneration, (2) the ability to control the manager's actions, (3) the costs of making untruthful profit declarations, and (4) the tax rate. If the firm's owner or the government takes into account these effects when pursuing his own objectives, the changes in tax payments and book profit declarations become theoretically more ambiguous.executive compensation, financial accounting, tax evasion

Corporate and Personal Income Tax Declarations

Decisions by firms and individuals on the extent of their tax payments have generally been treated as separate choices. Empirically, a positive relationship between corporate and personal income tax evasion can be observed. The theoretical analysis in this paper shows that a manager's decision on the firm's behaviour will be independent of his personal preferences if the gain from reducing corporate tax payments is certain, as in the case of tax avoidance. If, however, the firm evades taxes so that the manager's income depends on whether the firm's activities are detected or not, corporate and personal income tax evasion choices cannot be separated.firms, individuals, tax evasion, uncertainty

Tax Progressivity and Tax Evasion

More progressive income taxes raise employment in models of imperfectly competitive labour markets. However, this prediction is not robust to modifications of the analytical structure. For example, in an efficiency wage setting, more progressive taxes reduce profits. This induces firms to exit the market such that the positive employment effect can vanish in a framework with a constant profit constraint. In this paper, it is demonstrated for an according model that tax evasion opportunities raise the likelihood of positive employment effects due to higher tax progressivity.efficiency wages, employment, income tax, tax evasion, tax progressivity

Bureaucratic Corruption and Profit Tax Evasion

Firms may evade taxes on profits and can also avoid fulfilling legal restrictions on production activities by bribing bureaucrats. It is shown that the existence of tax evasion does not affect corruption activities at the firm level, while the budgetary repercussions of tax evasion induce less corruption. Policy measures which alter the gains or losses from corruption have a non-systematic impact on tax evasion behaviour.corruption, firms, tax evasion

Accident Law: An Excessive Standard May Be Efficient

In a world with risk-neutral agents, liability rules will only induce efficient behaviour if these rules impose the full (marginal) costs of an action on the parties. However, institutional restrictions or bilateral activity choices can prevent the full internalisation of costs. A mechanism is proposed which guarantees an efficient outcome: monetary fines which are not related to the occurrence of an accident. Such a mechanism requires individuals to violate the standard of care in order to trigger fine payments. Hence, efficiency needs an excessive standard.accident law, activity, care, efficiency, fines, standards of care, tort law

Commodity Tax Structure under Uncertainty in a Perfectly Competitive Market

In a partial equilibrium setting without price uncertainty, the balanced-budget substitution of an ad valorem tax on output for a specific (unit) tax can enhance welfare in imperfectly competitive markets and is without impact in a competitive world. This paper demonstrates that a substitution of this kind can also increase expected output and welfare in a competitive market characterised by uncertainty about the commodity price, if firms can respond to the revelation of demand conditions by altering output.ad valorem tax, commodity taxation, perfect competition, uncertainty, unit tax

Redundancy Pay and Collective Dismissals

Redundancy payments for collective dismissals are incorporated into a Shapiro-Stiglitz model of efficiency wages. It is shown that a fixed payment will lower wages, leave employment and welfare unaffected if there are no wage-dependent taxes, no additional firing costs and if unemployment benefits are not altered by redundancy payments. If payroll taxes exceed firing costs and unemployment benefits are independent of redundancy pay, employment and welfare will rise with redundancy payments. If these payments are also a function of previous wages, positive employment effects will be mitigated. A substitution of wage-dependent for lump-sum redundancy payments can lower employment, allowing for a continuous variation of effort.collective dismissal, efficiency wages, employment, redundancy pay, welfare

Trade Union Membership and Dismissals

In Germany, there is no trade union membership wage premium, while the membership fee amounts to 1% of the gross wage. Therefore, prima facie, there are strong incentives to freeride on the benefits of trade unionism. We establish empirical evidence for a private gain from trade union membership which has hitherto not been documented: in West Germany, union members are less likely to lose their jobs than non-members. In particular, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel we can show that roughly 50% of the observed raw differential in individual dismissal rates can be explained by the estimated average partial effect of union membership.free-riding, trade union membership, survey data

Fiscal Policy, Economic Integration and Unemployment.

Fiscal policy is examined in a model of an open economy which is characterised by unemployment caused by efficiency wages. It is shown that the conventional conclusion, according to which mobile capital is untaxed in the presence of wage taxation, is not generally valid. A positive capital tax allows to indirectly tax profits, thereby mitigating unemployment through the reduction in the effective tax burden on labour. It is argued that these policy conclusions are qualitatively unaffected by the cause of unemployment. Moreover, the welfare loss from labour market imperfections increases when tax bases become internationally mobile, which suggests an increasing relevance of domestic labour market reforms.

Severance Pay and the Shadow of the Law: Evidence for West Germany

Due to the complexity of employment protection legislation (EPL) in Germany, there is notable uncertainty about the outcomes of dismissal conflicts. In this study we focus on severance pay and inquire whether its incidence and level varies in a systematic manner with the legal rules as defined by labour as well as tax law. We start with a theoretical model that generates the main observable outcomes of dismissal conflicts as potential equilibrium situations. Using German panel data (GSOEP), we put our theoretical model to an empirical test. Our main result is that the shadow of the law matters. Criteria regarding the validity of dismissals either found in respective legislation or defined by labour courts significantly affect the incidence and magnitude of severance pay. Moreover, restrictive changes in the taxation of severance pay have a negative causal impact on its incidence.Severance pay; Labour law; Taxation; Sample selection; Survey data