About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

20 U. Pa. J. Bus. L. 93 (2017-2018)
Taxation without Information: The Institutional Foundations of Modern Tax Collection

handle is hein.journals/upjlel20 and id is 97 raw text is: TAXATION WITHOUT INFORMATION: THE INSTITUTIONAL FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN TAX COLLECTION Wei Cui* ABSTRACT: A prominent strand of recent economic and legal scholarship hypothesizes that third-party information reporting (TPIR) is essential to modem tax collection. The slogan, no taxation without information, has captured researchers' imaginations and is even often presented as self- evident truth. This Article offers a fundamentally different perspective, arguing that the emphasis on TPIR is misplaced. TPIR is used largely in the collection of the personal income tax but not of many other types of modem taxes. Even for the personal income tax, TPIR also has close substitutes which do not involve information transmission to the government. Theoretically, appeals to TPIR are vitiated by the puzzle of payor compliance. And most purported empirical evidence for the effectiveness of TPIR fails to provide causal identification. I suggest that to better understand the institutional foundations of modem tax collection, we should stop thinking of business firms as fiscal intermediaries in a game of deterrence against tax evaders. Instead, it would be more fruitful to conceive of firms as sites of social cooperation under the rule of law. The co-evolution of the business firm and modem regulatory law may have enabled modem governments to practice precisely taxation without information. * Author email: cui@allard.ubc.ca. I am grateful for comments on earlier drafts of the paper from Arthur Cockfield, Pierre-Pascal Gendron, Mitchell Kane, Michael Knoll, Leandra Lederman, Alan Macnaughton, George Yin, and audiences at the University of Toronto Law School James Hausman Tax Law & Policy Workshop, University of Virginia Law School Fall Invitational Tax Symposium (2016), 109th National Tax Association Annual Meeting, and the Waterloo/Deloitte Tax Policy Research Symposium (2017). I am also grateful for discussion with Reuven Avi-Yonah, Jim Hines, Kyle Logue, Emily Satterthwaite, and Joel Slemrod. All errors remain my own. Copyright 2017 by Wei Cui. All rights reserved.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most