Inequality in tax evasion: the case of the Spanish income tax

dc.contributor.authorTorregrosa Hetland, Sara
dc.contributor.departmentEconomíaes_ES
dc.contributor.departmentEkonomiaeu
dc.date.accessioned2025-01-03T08:11:43Z
dc.date.available2025-01-03T08:11:43Z
dc.date.issued2020-03-11
dc.date.updated2025-01-03T08:06:22Z
dc.description.abstractPurpose: the purpose of this paper is to estimate tax evasion and its impact on progressivity, redistribution and the measurement of inequality, using microdata from the Spanish income tax for 2001-2004. Design/methodology/approach: the approach follows Feldman and Slemrod (2007) by exploiting the relation of charitable donations with the composition of income but introduces two methodological innovations, which could be useful for further studies: correction for sample selection with a Heckman two-step setting and the calculation of different evasion rates for top incomes with an interaction term. Findings: evasion in capital incomes was significant throughout these years. Financial incomes were reported at around 50-70 per cent of their real value, with the lowest estimates corresponding to the top decile. Revenues from fixed capital display similarly low compliance rates for the top 10 per cent. Tax evasion in self-employment incomes (direct assessment) is estimated at 20 per cent for 2001. Mostly because of a composition effect, this means that fraud was higher at the top of the income distribution, thus having a regressive impact. Inequality statistics and top income concentration estimates should, therefore, be revised upwards. Originality/value: this is the first paper to estimate the distributive impacts of tax evasion in Spain, and one of very few internationally.en
dc.description.sponsorshipThe author acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education's scholarship program Formación del Profesorado Universitario and the Research Project ECO2012-39169-C03-03.
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationTorregrosa-Hetland, S. (2020) Inequality in tax evasion: the case of the Spanish income tax. Applied Economic Analysis, 28(83), 89-109. https://doi.org/10.1108/AEA-01-2020-0007
dc.identifier.doi10.1108/AEA-01-2020-0007
dc.identifier.issn2632-7627
dc.identifier.urihttps://academica-e.unavarra.es/handle/2454/52813
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherEmerald
dc.relation.ispartofApplied Economic Analysis, 28(83), 89-109.
dc.relation.projectIDinfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/MINECO//ECO2012-39169-C03-03/ES/
dc.relation.publisherversionhttps://doi.org/10.1108/AEA-01-2020-0007
dc.rights© Sara Torregrosa Hetland. Published in Applied Economic Analysis. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence.
dc.rights.accessRightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subjectIncome inequalityen
dc.subjectPersonal income taxen
dc.subjectProgressivityen
dc.subjectRedistributionen
dc.subjectTax evasionen
dc.titleInequality in tax evasion: the case of the Spanish income taxen
dc.typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.type.versioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
dspace.entity.typePublication
relation.isAuthorOfPublication383e1e14-7d3e-48cd-a76b-ab770c3ae56d
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery383e1e14-7d3e-48cd-a76b-ab770c3ae56d

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