• Media type: Report; E-Book
  • Title: The Incidence of VAT Evasion
  • Contributor: Asatryan, Zareh [Author]; Gomtsyan, David [Author]
  • Published: Munich: Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute (CESifo), 2020
  • Language: English
  • Keywords: D11 ; distributional effects ; H22 ; value added tax ; evasion ; incidence ; H26 ; enforcement ; passthrough
  • Origination:
  • Footnote: Diese Datenquelle enthält auch Bestandsnachweise, die nicht zu einem Volltext führen.
  • Description: Who benefits from the evasion of value added taxes (VAT)? Using a reform that enforced VAT on previously non-compliant large retailers in Armenia, we estimate a one-third passthrough of the tax burden on prices. This suggests that pre-enforcement evasion rents were broadly shared with consumers through lower prices. Our theoretical and empirical results explain this low passthrough rate by the supply-chain effects and second-order compliance responses of firms to VAT enforcement. Our distributional analysis shows that households at the bottom of the income distribution benefit more from the rents of evasion.
  • Access State: Open Access