IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/amlawe/v15y2013i1p187-211.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is Knowledge of the Tax Law Socially Desirable?

Author

Listed:
  • David A. Weisbach

Abstract

This paper considers whether knowledge of the tax law is socially desirable. Unlike other laws, which most often attempt to channel behavior, revenue-raising taxes attempt to avoid changing behavior; so, it is not obvious whether or when knowledge of the tax law is desirable. I argue that whether knowledge of the tax law is desirable depends on three factors: expectations about the tax in the absence of knowledge, the type of tax, and the quality of the tax. These factors may often be hard to observe, which leads to the conclusion that it may often not be desirable to try to manipulate knowledge of the tax law. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • David A. Weisbach, 2013. "Is Knowledge of the Tax Law Socially Desirable?," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 15(1), pages 187-211.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:15:y:2013:i:1:p:187-211
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aler/aht002
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

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

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nigar Hashimzade, 2023. "Tax Uncertainty and Welfare-Improving Tax Disputes," CESifo Working Paper Series 10392, CESifo.
    2. Tomáš Kouba, 2017. "Tax Enforcement of Execution and Insolvency Proceedings [Vymáhání daňových nedoplatků exekucí a insolvenčním řízením]," Acta Oeconomica Pragensia, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2017(3), pages 57-67.

    More about this item

    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:oup:amlawe:v:15:y:2013:i:1:p:187-211. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/aler .

    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.