Kor utbreidd er skatteunndragelse - og kva betyr dette for faktisk ulikhet? I ein ny artikkel i American Economic Review brukar Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen og Gabriel Zucman nye data til å sjå nærare på fordelingen av skjulte utanlandsformuer i Skandinavia og kva dette betyr for målinga av ulikhet.
Alstadsæter, Annette, Niels Johannesen, og Gabriel Zucman (2019): Tax Evasion and Inequality. American Economic Review 2019, 109(6): 2073-2103.
Artikkelen ligg bak betalingsmur, men kan lastas ned her.
Drawing on a unique dataset of leaked customer lists from offshore financial institutions matched to administrative wealth records in Scandinavia, we show that offshore tax evasion is highly concentrated among the rich. The skewed distribution of offshore wealth implies high rates of tax evasion at the top: we find that the 0.01 percent richest households evade about 25 percent of their taxes. By contrast, tax evasion detected in stratified random tax audits is less than 5 percent throughout the distribution. Top wealth shares increase substantially when accounting for unreported assets, highlighting the importance of factoring in tax evasion to properly measure inequality.
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