Should-Read: Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen, and Gabriel Zucman: Tax Evasion and Inequality

Should-Read: Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen, and Gabriel Zucman: Tax Evasion and Inequality: “We combine stratified random audits… with new micro-data leaked from two large offshore financial institutions, HSBC Switzerland (“Swiss leaks”) and Mossack Fonseca (“Panama Papers”)… http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/AJZ2017.pdf

…We match these… to population-wide wealth records in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark…. Tax evasion rises sharply with wealth, a phenomenon that random audits fail to capture…. About 3% of personal taxes are evaded in Scandinavia, but this figure rises to about 30% in the top 0.01% of the wealth distribution…. Taking tax evasion into account increases the rise in inequality seen in tax data since the 1970s markedly…. Fighting tax evasion can be an effective way to collect more tax revenue from the ultra-wealthy…