IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/itaxpf/v31y2024i1d10.1007_s10797-023-09811-y.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Detecting envelope wages with e-billing information

Author

Listed:
  • Andrea Lopez-Luzuriaga

    (Universidad del Rosario)

  • Monica Calijuri

    (Inter-American Development Bank)

  • Carola Pessino

    (Inter-American Development Bank)

  • Simeon Schächtele

    (Inter-American Development Bank)

  • Ubaldo Gonzalez

    (Inter-American Development Bank)

  • Carla Chamorro

    (Servicio de Rentas Internas Ecuador)

Abstract

We use information from the electronic billing system to estimate the underreporting of income of private sector employees. We follow an expenditure-based methodology using the consumption of public and private sector employees for similar levels of reported income. We find that private sector employees underreport between 7 and 9% of their income in Ecuador. The size of the underreporting gap is negatively correlated with the number of employees at the firm, consistent with different risks and administrative costs of ‘envelope wages’ in small versus large firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrea Lopez-Luzuriaga & Monica Calijuri & Carola Pessino & Simeon Schächtele & Ubaldo Gonzalez & Carla Chamorro, 2024. "Detecting envelope wages with e-billing information," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 31(1), pages 26-65, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:itaxpf:v:31:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1007_s10797-023-09811-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s10797-023-09811-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10797-023-09811-y
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10797-023-09811-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marcelo Bergolo & Guillermo Cruces, 2014. "Work and tax evasion incentive effects of social insurance programs. Evidence from an employment-based benefit extension," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0161, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    2. 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.
    3. Di Nola Alessandro & Kocharkov Georgi & Vasilev Aleksandar, 2019. "Envelope wages, hidden production and labor productivity," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 19(2), pages 1-30, June.
    4. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez & Klara Sabirianova Peter, 2009. "Myth and Reality of Flat Tax Reform: Micro Estimates of Tax Evasion Response and Welfare Effects in Russia," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(3), pages 504-554, June.
    5. Geoffrey R. Dunbar & Chunling Fu, 2015. "Sheltered Income: Estimating Income Under-Reporting in Canada, 1998 and 2004," Staff Working Papers 15-22, Bank of Canada.
    6. Naomi E. Feldman & Joel Slemrod, 2007. "Estimating tax noncompliance with evidence from unaudited tax returns," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(518), pages 327-352, March.
    7. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Claus Thustrup Kreiner & Emmanuel Saez, 2016. "Why Can Modern Governments Tax So Much? An Agency Model of Firms as Fiscal Intermediaries," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(330), pages 219-246, April.
    8. Paul Carrillo & Dina Pomeranz & Monica Singhal, 2017. "Dodging the Taxman: Firm Misreporting and Limits to Tax Enforcement," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 144-164, April.
    9. Erling Barth & Tone Ognedal, 2018. "Tax Evasion in Firms," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 32(1), pages 23-44, March.
    10. Todd Kumler & Eric Verhoogen & Judith Frías, 2020. "Enlisting Employees in Improving Payroll Tax Compliance: Evidence from Mexico," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(5), pages 881-896, December.
    11. Colin C. Williams & Ioana A. Horodnic, 2017. "Evaluating the Illegal Employer Practice of Under-Reporting Employees’ Salaries," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 55(1), pages 83-111, March.
    12. Andreas Chai & Alessio Moneta, 2010. "Retrospectives: Engel Curves," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(1), pages 225-240, Winter.
    13. Per Engstrom & Bertil Holmlund, 2009. "Tax evasion and self-employment in a high-tax country: evidence from Sweden," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(19), pages 2419-2430.
    14. Pissarides, Christopher A. & Weber, Guglielmo, 1989. "An expenditure-based estimate of Britain's black economy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 17-32, June.
    15. Ana Cinta G. Cabral & Norman Gemmell & Nazila Alinaghi, 2021. "Are survey-based self-employment income underreporting estimates biased? New evidence from matched register and survey data," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 28(2), pages 284-322, April.
    16. Sara Torregrosa-Hetland, 2020. "Inequality in tax evasion: the case of the Spanish income tax," Applied Economic Analysis, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 28(83), pages 89-109, March.
    17. Joel Slemrod, 2019. "Tax Compliance and Enforcement," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 57(4), pages 904-954, December.
    18. Mustafa Besim & Glenn Jenkins, 2005. "Tax compliance: when do employees behave like the self-employed?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(10), pages 1201-1208.
    19. Nikolaos Artavanis & Adair Morse & Margarita Tsoutsoura, 2016. "Measuring Income Tax Evasion Using Bank Credit: Evidence from Greece," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(2), pages 739-798.
    20. Anders Jensen, 2022. "Employment Structure and the Rise of the Modern Tax System," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(1), pages 213-234, January.
    21. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Martin B. Knudsen & Claus Thustrup Kreiner & Søren Pedersen & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Unwilling or Unable to Cheat? Evidence From a Tax Audit Experiment in Denmark," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(3), pages 651-692, May.
    22. Allingham, Michael G. & Sandmo, Agnar, 1972. "Income tax evasion: a theoretical analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(3-4), pages 323-338, November.
    23. Nicholas Li, 2021. "An Engel Curve for Variety," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(1), pages 72-87, March.
    24. Tufan Ekici & Mustafa Besim, 2016. "A Measure of the Shadow Economy in a Small Economy: Evidence from Household-Level Expenditure Patterns," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 62(1), pages 145-160, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bjørkheim, Julie Brun & Nygård, Odd E., 2024. "Gender Differences in Tax Evasion: Evidence from Norwegian Administrative Data," Discussion Papers 2024/8, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    2. Todd Kumler & Eric Verhoogen & Judith Frías, 2020. "Enlisting Employees in Improving Payroll Tax Compliance: Evidence from Mexico," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(5), pages 881-896, December.
    3. Odd E Nygård & Joel Slemrod & Thor O Thoresen, 2019. "Distributional Implications of Joint Tax Evasion," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(620), pages 1894-1923.
    4. Tomáš Lichard & Jan Hanousek & Randall K. Filer, 2021. "Hidden in plain sight: using household data to measure the shadow economy," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(3), pages 1449-1476, March.
    5. Marie Bjørneby & Annette Alstadsæter & Kjetil Telle, 2018. "Collusive tax evasion by employers and employees. Evidence from a randomized fi eld experiment in Norway," Discussion Papers 891, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    6. Marcelo Bergolo & Gabriel Burdin & Mauricio De Rosa & Matias Giaccobasso & Martín Leites, 2019. "Tax bunching at the Kink in the Presence of Low Capacity of Enforcement: Evidence From Uruguay," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 19-05, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    7. Waseem, Mazhar, 2023. "Overclaimed refunds, undeclared sales, and invoice mills: Nature and extent of noncompliance in a value-added tax," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    8. Israel Marques II, 2022. "Skipping Out On The Check: Institutional Quality, Tax Evasion, And Individual Preferences For Social Policy," HSE Working papers WP BRP 85/PS/2022, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    9. James Alm, 2019. "What Motivates Tax Compliance?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 353-388, April.
    10. Ana Cinta G. Cabral & Norman Gemmell & Nazila Alinaghi, 2021. "Are survey-based self-employment income underreporting estimates biased? New evidence from matched register and survey data," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 28(2), pages 284-322, April.
    11. Cabral, Ana Cinta G. & Gemmell, Norman, 2018. "Estimating Self-Employment Income-Gaps from Register and Survey Data: Evidence for New Zealand," Working Paper Series 7625, Victoria University of Wellington, Chair in Public Finance.
    12. Nicolas Gavoille & Anna Zasova, 2021. "What we pay in the shadows: Labor tax evasion, minimum wage hike and employment," SSE Riga/BICEPS Research Papers 6, Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies (BICEPS);Stockholm School of Economics in Riga (SSE Riga).
    13. Garriga, Pablo & Tortarolo, Dario, 2024. "Firms as tax collectors," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 233(C).
    14. Holz, Justin E. & List, John A. & Zentner, Alejandro & Cardoza, Marvin & Zentner, Joaquin E., 2023. "The $100 million nudge: Increasing tax compliance of firms using a natural field experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    15. Dina Pomeranz & José Vila-Belda, 2019. "Taking State-Capacity Research to the Field: Insights from Collaborations with Tax Authorities," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 755-781, August.
    16. Bachas, Pierre & Gadenne, Lucie & Jensen, Anders, 2020. "Informality, Consumption Taxes and Redistribution," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1277, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    17. Bjørneby, Marie & Alstadsæter, Annette & Telle, Kjetil, 2021. "Limits to third-party reporting: Evidence from a randomized field experiment in Norway," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    18. Cabral, Ana Cinta G. & Gemmell, Norman, 2018. "Estimating Self-Employment Income-Gaps from Register and Survey Data: Evidence for New Zealand," Working Paper Series 20833, Victoria University of Wellington, Chair in Public Finance.
    19. Frank M. Fossen & Ray Rees & Davud Rostam-Afschar & Viktor Steiner, 2020. "The effects of income taxation on entrepreneurial investment: A puzzle?," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 27(6), pages 1321-1363, December.
    20. Nikolaos Artavanis & Adair Morse & Margarita Tsoutsoura, 2015. "Tax Evasion across Industries: Soft Credit Evidence from Greece," NBER Working Papers 21552, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Income tax; Evasion; Electronic billing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:itaxpf:v:31:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1007_s10797-023-09811-y. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.