IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qed/wpaper/890.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Evasion and Time Consistency in the Taxation of Capital Income

Author

Listed:
  • Robin W. Boadway
  • Michael Keen

Abstract

Evasion and time inconsistency have been prominent concerns in recent discussions capital income taxation, both theoretical and applied. This paper establishes a link between them, suggesting a potentially useful role for evasion additional to those previously identified: by committing to relatively tax enforcement, the government may be able to alleviate the welfare loss implied by its inability to commit to the tax rate. The scope for this role proves strikingly wide: it is optimal for the government to facilitate the evasion of the capital income taxes that it chooses to impose whenever the time consistent tax rate exceeds that which would be optimal if the government could commit to it.

Suggested Citation

  • Robin W. Boadway & Michael Keen, 1993. "Evasion and Time Consistency in the Taxation of Capital Income," Working Paper 890, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    • Handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:890
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/working_papers/papers/qed_wp_890.pdf
    File Function: First version 1993
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Selim, Sheikh, 2006. "On Policy Relevance of Ramsey Tax Rules," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2006/19, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section, revised Jul 2006.
    2. Carlos Bethencourt & Lars Kunze, 2019. "Tax evasion, social norms, and economic growth," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 21(2), pages 332-346, April.
    3. Konrad, Kai A. & Erik Lommerud, Kjell, 2001. "Foreign direct investment, intra-firm trade and ownership structure," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 475-494, March.
    4. Winand Emons, 2004. "Subgame-Perfect Punishment for Repeat Offenders," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 42(3), pages 496-502, July.
    5. Oliver Lorz, 2004. "Time Consistent Optimal Redistribution Policy in an Overlapping Generations Model," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 6(1), pages 25-41, February.
    6. Frode Brevik & Manfred Gärtner, 2008. "Can tax evasion tame Leviathan governments?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 136(1), pages 103-122, July.
    7. Pirttilä, Jukka, 1999. "Tax evasion and economies in transition : Lessons from tax theory," BOFIT Discussion Papers 2/1999, Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition.
    8. Dan Anderberg & Carlo Perroni, "undated". "Renegotiation of Social Contracts by Majority Rule," EPRU Working Paper Series 00-15, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    9. Konrad, Kai A., 1999. "Privacy, time consistent optimal labor income taxation and education policy," IZA Discussion Papers 82, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Pirttilä, Jukka, 1999. "Tax evasion and economies in transition: Lessons from tax theory," BOFIT Discussion Papers 2/1999, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    11. Pääkkönen, Jenni, 2008. "Optimal law enforcement and welfare in the presence of organized crime," BOFIT Discussion Papers 30/2008, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    12. Konrad, Kai A., 2001. "Privacy and time-consistent optimal labor income taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(3), pages 503-519, March.
    13. Alexander Haupt & Eckhard Janeba, 2009. "Education, redistribution and the threat of brain drain," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 16(1), pages 1-24, February.
    14. Robin Boadway & Motohiro Sato, 2000. "The Optimality of Punishing Only the Innocent: The Case of Tax Evasion," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 7(6), pages 641-664, December.
    15. Buchholz, Wolfgang & Wiegard, Wolfgang, 1997. "Zeit(in)konsistente Steuerpolitik," Tübinger Diskussionsbeiträge 115, University of Tübingen, School of Business and Economics.
    16. Leandro Arozamena & Martin Besfamille & Pablo Sanguinetti, 2010. "Optimal taxes and penalties when the government cannot commit to its audit policy," Department of Economics Working Papers 2010-10, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.
    17. repec:zbw:bofitp:1999_002 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Garon, Jean-Denis, 2016. "The commitment value of funding pensions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 11-14.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
    • H30 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - General

    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:qed:wpaper:890. 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: Mark Babcock (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/qedquca.html .

    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.