Corruption, extortion and evasion

Corruption, evasion and the abuse of power - and the possibility thereof - are pervasive features of economic activity. A prominent instance is tax collection. This paper examines the implications of corruptibility and the potential abuse of authority for the effects and optimal design of (potentially non-linear) tax collection schemes. Amongst the findings are that: the distributional effects of evasion and corruption are unambiguously regressive under the kinds of schemes usual in practice; and collecting progressive taxes without inducing evasion or corruption may require that inspectors be paid commission on high income reports (but not on low), with the cost of this potentially creating what seems to be a previously-unnoticed trade-off between equity and efficiency. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.