Responses of Firms to Tax, Administrative and Accounting Rules

Asatryan, Zareh and Peichl, Andreas (30. October 2017): Responses of Firms to Tax, Administrative and Accounting Rules. Evidence from Armenia. CESifo Working Paper No. 6754,

Abstract

Using panel data on the full population of corporate tax returns from Armenia, we study behavioral responses of firms to three size-dependent regulations. We find: i) a strong response to an accounting notch where IFRS becomes mandatory; ii) a moderate response to an administrative notch below which the frequency of filing taxes declines; and iii) no response to the VAT registration threshold notch. Exploiting tax audits, we provide evidence suggesting that income under-reporting drives the bunching response of firms. Additional evidence suggests that firms respond to audits by compensating additional reported income by a 0.90 dollar increase in deductions.

• Item Type: Paper
• Keywords: Small and medium enterprises; size-dependent regulation; value added tax; tax administration; tax accounting; tax evasion
• Faculties: Economics > Chairs > CESifo-Professorship for Public Finance
• Subjects: 300 Social sciences > 330 Economics
• JEL Classification: H25, H26, O12
• Place of Publication: München
• Language: English