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Estimating the “Tax Gap” at the State Level: The Case of Georgia's Personal Income Tax

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  • James Alm
  • Kyle Borders

Abstract

Most studies of the so-called "tax gap" (or the amount of taxes that should be collected but are not) focus on national taxes. This study provides several estimates of the "tax gap" for the State of Georgia's personal income tax. The methods use different estimation strategies for each of the three main components (underreporting of income, underpayment of tax liability, and nonfiling of a tax return), and then sum these separate estimates of the tax gap components to yield a range of estimates of the total tax gap in Georgia. The estimated range of the personal income tax gap is \$1.4 billion to \$2.9 billion, for a voluntary compliance rate that ranges from 89.8 percent to 80.8 percent. This study also provides some rough but suggestive estimates of the distributional effects of noncompliance, which indicate that noncompliance as a proportion of income may well be higher in lower income classes.
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Suggested Citation

  • James Alm & Kyle Borders, 2014. "Estimating the “Tax Gap” at the State Level: The Case of Georgia's Personal Income Tax," Public Budgeting & Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 61-79, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:pbudge:v:34:y:2014:i:4:p:61-79
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/pbaf.12050
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    Cited by:

    1. Félix Domínguez-Barrero & Julio López-Laborda & Fernando Rodrigo-Sauco, 2017. "Tax evasion in Spanish Personal Income Tax by income sources, 2005–2008: from the synthetic to the dual tax," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 47-65, August.
    2. Sara Torregrosa, 2015. "Bypassing progressive taxation: fraud and base erosion in the Spanish income tax (1970-2001)," Working Papers 2015/31, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
    • H61 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Budget; Budget Systems
    • H68 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Forecasts of Budgets, Deficits, and Debt
    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H83 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - Public Administration

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