Arbeitspapier
Tax evasion and self-employment in a high-tax country: evidence from Sweden
Self-employed individuals have arguably greater opportunities than wage earners to underreport their incomes. The incentives for underreporting should be especially strong in an economy with generally high taxes. This paper uses recent income and expenditure data to examine the extent of underreporting of income among self-employed individuals in Sweden. A key hypothesis is that underreporting of incomes among the self-employed would be visible in the data as excess food consumption, for a given level of observed income. Our results confirm the underreporting hypothesis. In particular, we estimate that households with at least one self-employed member underreport their total incomes by around 30 percent. Underreporting appears to be twice as prevalent among self-employed people with unincorporated businesses as among those with incorporated businesses.
- Language
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Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
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Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 1736
- Classification
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Wirtschaft
Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies; includes inheritance and gift taxes
Business Taxes and Subsidies including sales and value-added (VAT)
Tax Evasion and Avoidance
- Subject
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Steuerflucht
Selbstständige
Mikroökonomische Konsumfunktion
Schweden
- Event
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Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
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Engström, Per
Holmlund, Bertil
- Event
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Veröffentlichung
- (who)
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Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
- (where)
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Munich
- (when)
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2006
- Handle
- Last update
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10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET
Data provider
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Engström, Per
- Holmlund, Bertil
- Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
Time of origin
- 2006