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Tax avoidance among large multinational corporations has considerably increased in recent years, triggering an intense discussion about how to ensure that all pay their ‘fair share’. We propose a novel experimental design to incentive-compatibly model the firm-consumer relationship in a consumer goods market. This new paradigm allows us to analyze the effect of increased tax transparency on consumer and firm behavior in a dynamic framework. We find that absent the threat of being directly exposed as a tax avoiding firm, only 26% of the firms decide to pay taxes. Once tax avoiding firms are identifiable in the market, this rate rises to 58%. Providing market participants addi- tionally with information about the social costs of tax avoidance increases the fraction of tax paying firms further to 74%. We observe that these improvements are the conse- quence of firms proactively deciding to pay taxes. At the highest level of transparency, we further observe that consumers show a stronger proclivity to boycott tax avoiding firms, even if these firms offer cheaper prices

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  • Michael Razen
  • Alexander Kupfer

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  • Michael Razen & Alexander Kupfer, 2021. "Tax avoidance among large multinational corporations has considerably increased in recent years, triggering an intense discussion about how to ensure that all pay their ‘fair share’. We propose a nove," Working Papers 2021-10, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    • Handle: RePEc:inn:wpaper:2021-10
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Antonetti, Paolo & Anesa, Mattia, 2017. "Consumer reactions to corporate tax strategies: The role of political ideology," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 1-10.
    2. James Alm & Antoine Malézieux, 2021. "40 years of tax evasion games: a meta-analysis," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(3), pages 699-750, September.
    3. Bock, Olaf & Baetge, Ingmar & Nicklisch, Andreas, 2014. "hroot: Hamburg Registration and Organization Online Tool," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 117-120.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    economic experiment; tax avoidance; public good dilemma; consumer behavior; firm behavior;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C9 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance

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