TY  - BOOK
AU  - Beron,Kurt J.
AU  - Tauchen,Helen V.
AU  - Witte,Ann Dryden
ED  - National Bureau of Economic Research.
TI  - A Structural Equation Model for Tax Compliance and Auditing
T2  - NBER working paper series
PY  - 1988///
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
PB  - National Bureau of Economic Research
N1  - April 1988; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
N2  - In this paper. we estimate a three equation model for taxpayers' reported income and tax liability and for the probability of an audit. Our work differs from previous studies in that our dependent variables in the compliance equations are taxpayer reports rather than a variable related to auditor estimates of noncompliance and in that we estimate a structural equation for audits. We find that audits stimulate compliance although the effect is not large and is not statistically significant for all groups. Audits are more effective at inducing accurate reporting of subtractions from income than of income. Reduced-form results suggest that IRS activities other than audits have significant compliance effects. Results for the sociodemographic variables are interesting and help to explain some seemingly incongruous findings in the literature. We find compliance to be higher, if anything. in areas with less educated and older taxpayers, a large proportion of households headed by females. and a mostly native born population
UR  - https://www.nber.org/papers/w2556
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w2556
ER  -