Essays in the Economics and Law of Taxation

public finance;tax evasion;independent contractor;tax systems design;Social Sciences;Economics

Wilking, EleanorHines Jr, James R ;

University of Michigan

关键词: public finance;    tax evasion;    independent contractor;    tax systems design;    Social Sciences;    Economics;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/145972/ewilking_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Firms are critical components in the success of virtually all modern tax systems. This dissertation uses theoretical and empirical methods to investigate firm behavioral responses to changes in tax law that affect firms’ substantive tax burden, their role as the government’s intermediary, or both. Such responses can change key tax system parameters, including the tax burden and government revenues through a change in compliance with the law or, in some cases, a change in the economic fundamentals like consumption or labor demand.In Chapters 1 and 3, I explore this premise in the context of consumption taxes. Chapter 2 considers the income tax context. Two themes emerge from these projects. First, the nature of firms as entities in the tax system is changing, and these changes may affect the traditional role of firms as the locus of information for economic activity. Chapters 1 and 3 consider the phenomenon of ;;platform” firms, which shift income generation or consumption from traditional employers or retailers to individuals. Additionally, information on these taxable transactions is concentrated in the firm facilitating the transaction. Chapters 1 and 3 explore how this combination affords the platform firm significant leverage in negotiating the terms of its cooperation with local tax authorities in remitting taxes. In Chapter 2, I document the expansion of labor income generated outside of the traditional employer relationship, which also has a potentially disruptive effect as the government does not have the resources to intensively audit individual business deductions. Second, collectively, these papers highlight the relevance of statutory features—reporting requirements, remittance and withholding obligations, size-based exemptions—which, historically, have not featured prominently in the optimal taxation or incidence literatures in public finance. In both Chapters 1 and 3, I find that shifting the remittance duty affects the absolute tax burden of consumers. In Chapter 2, I find evidence that a firm size-based exemption distorts the decisions of firms to locate, or at least to report their location, close to the threshold number of employees. These findings join those in an increasingly populated field of papers that recognize the importance of legal and regulatory dimensions for the design of modern tax systems.