IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/nattax/doi10.1086-728928.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Seeking Professional Help: How Paid Preparers Decrease Tax Compliance

Author

Listed:
  • Jason DeBacker
  • Bradley T. Heim
  • Anh Tran
  • Alexander Yuskavage

Abstract

Legal services, such as tax preparation, claim to help clients better comply with the law while maximizing their benefits. We test this claim using data from about 135,000 random audits conducted by the US Internal Revenue Service between 2006 and 2014. Supplementing this nationally representative cross section of data on tax compliance with an instrumental-variable approach, we find that tax preparers actually reduce compliance, increasing taxpayers’ underreporting of income by roughly $3,900 per tax return. However, we find that volunteer tax preparers assisting low-income taxpayers have compliance rates similar to self-prepared returns, suggesting that differences in clientele or pecuniary incentives can affect the relationship between tax-preparation services and tax compliance.

Suggested Citation

  • Jason DeBacker & Bradley T. Heim & Anh Tran & Alexander Yuskavage, 2024. "Seeking Professional Help: How Paid Preparers Decrease Tax Compliance," National Tax Journal, University of Chicago Press, vol. 77(2), pages 229-261.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:nattax:doi:10.1086/728928
    DOI: 10.1086/728928
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/728928
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/728928
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/728928?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 search for a different version of it.

    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:ucp:nattax:doi:10.1086/728928. 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/NTJ .

    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.