TY  - BOOK
AU  - Almunia,Miguel
AU  - Hjort,Jonas
AU  - Knebelmann,Justine
AU  - Tian,Lin
ED  - National Bureau of Economic Research.
TI  - Strategic or Confused Firms? Evidence from "Missing" Transactions in Uganda
T2  - NBER working paper series
PY  - 2021///
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
PB  - National Bureau of Economic Research
N1  - July 2021; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
N2  - Are firms sophisticated maximizers, or do they consistently make errors? Using transaction-level data from Ugandan value-added tax (VAT) returns, we show that sellers and buyers report different amounts 79% of the time, despite invoices being easily cross-checked. We estimate that 25% of firms are disadvantageous misreporters--they systematically misreport own sales and purchases such that their tax liability increases--while 75% are advantageous misreporters. Many firms--especially disadvantageous misreporters--fail to report imported inputs they themselves reported at Customs, increasing their VAT liability. On net, unilateral VAT misreporting cost Uganda about US$384 million in foregone 2013-2016 tax revenue
UR  - https://www.nber.org/papers/w29059
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w29059
ER  -