题目：Unwilling or Unable to Cheat? Evidence from a Tax Audit Experiment in Denmark

作者：Henrik J. Kleven, Martin B. Knudsen, Claus T. Kreiner, Søren Pedersen and Emmanuel Saez

文献出处：Econometrica, 79(3), 2011: 651 - 692.

主讲人：王婷博士

时间：2019年5月30日14：00-16：00

地点：浙江财经大学财税学院1号楼302室

主办单位：浙江财经大学现代公共经济学研究中心

内容摘要：This paper analyzes a tax enforcement field experiment in Denmark. In the base year, a stratified and representative sample of over 40,000 individual income tax filers was selected for the experiment. Half of the tax filers were randomly selected to bethoroughly audited, while the rest were deliberately not audited. The following year,threat-of-audit letters were randomly assigned and sent to tax filers in both groups. We present three main empirical findings. First, using baseline audit data, we find that the tax evasion rate is close to zero for income subject to third-party reporting, but substantial for self-reported income. Since most income is subject to third-party reporting, the overall evasion rate is modest. Second, using quasi-experimental variation created by large kinks in the income tax schedule, we find that marginal tax rates have a positive impact on tax evasion for self-reported income, but that this effect is small in comparison to legal avoidance and behavioral responses. Third, using the randomization of enforcement, we find that prior audits and threat-of-audit letters have significant effectson self-reported income, but no effect on third-party reported income. All these empirical results can be explained by extending the standard model of (rational) tax evasion to allow for the key distinction between self-reported and third-party reportedincome.

本文分析了丹麦的一项税收执法实验，这一实验在基准年度通过分层抽样选取了约40000个申报纳税的个人作为研究对象，选取样本当年，一半研究对象将会被税务部门检查，另一半研究对象则无任何特殊处理；选取样本的次年，全部研究对象都将会收到一封由税务部门寄出的警示邮件。通过对这一实验的分析，本文主要得到了三个结论：首先，对基准年度数据的分析表明，在丹麦，经由第三方平台扣缴的收入部分，税收流失比率几乎为0，而由个人申报缴纳的收入部分，则存在较大的税收流失比率；其次，本文发现，边际税率与个人申报缴纳的收入部分的税收流失比率存在正相关关系，但纳税人更倾向于通过税收筹划而非逃税来进行税款的规避；最后，本文还发现，事前检查以及预警信息对自行申报的纳税人都有显著影响，但是对于通过第三方平台扣缴的纳税人，则不存在显著影响。