We focus on a relatively neglected area of the tax-compliance literature in economics, the behaviour of firms. We examine the impact of alternative audit rules on receipts from a tax on profits in the context of strategic inter-dependence of firms. In the market firms may compete in terms of either output or price. The enforcement policy can have an effect on firms' behaviour in two dimensions -their market decisions as well as their compliance behaviour. An appropriate design of the enforcement policy can thus have a "double dividend" by manipulating firms in both dimensions.JEL: H20, H21

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThis paper presents a theoretical model and empirical evidence to explain the occurrence of tax amnesties. We treat amnesties as endogenous, resulting from a strategic game between many tax payers discounting future payments from punishment and a government that trades off costs and benefits of amnesty programmes. From the model we derive hypotheses about the factors that should influence the occurrence of tax amnesties. For our empirical test we rely on amnesty information from US states between 1981 and 2011. In line with the theoretical model, our empirical findings suggest that the likelihood of amnesties is mainly driven by a government's fiscal requirements and the taxpayers' expectations on future amnesties. Abstract This paper presents a theoretical model and empirical evidence to explain the occurrence of tax amnesties. We treat amnesties as endogenous, resulting from a strategic game between many taxpayers discounting future payments from punishment and a government that trades off costs and benefits of amnesty programs. From the model we derive hypotheses about the factors that should influence the occurrence of tax amnesties. For our empirical test we rely on amnesty information from US States between 1981 and 2011. In line with the theoretical model, our empirical findings suggest that the likelihood of amnesties is mainly driven by a government's fiscal requirements and the taxpayers' expectations on future amnesties.

Firms are usually better informed than tax authorities about market conditions and the potential prots of competitors. They may try to exploit this situation by under-reporting their own taxable prots.The tax authority could oset rms' informational advantage by adopting smarter audit policies that take into account the relationship between a rm's reported prots and reports for the industry as a whole. Such an audit policy will create an externality for the decision makers in the industry and this externality can be expected to aect not only rms' reporting policies but also their market decisions. If public policy takes into account wider economic issues than just revenue raising what is the appropriate way for a tax authority to run such an audit policy? We develop some clear policy rules in a standard model of an industry and show the eect of these rules using simulations.JEL: H20, H21

This paper investigates the impact of cognitive abilities and preferences on behavior in games. We first measure subjects' logical abilities and social preferences and then evaluate their influence on behavior in strategic-form games. For this purpose, we estimate how logical abilities and preferences relate to the probability of a subject being of a specific behavioral type. We find that better logical abilities increase the likelihood of sophisticated behavior. This shift is stronger for subjects who are classified as "selfish". However, not even the most logically able, selfish subjects are identified as Nash types.

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