How can governments get individuals and firms to pay taxes, especially given increasing tax base erosion via tax evasion, tax avoidance, and money laundering? In this paper we discuss the many different perspectives to explain why people pay – and do not pay – their taxes, especially perspectives based on “responsive regulation,” and we use then these perspectives to suggest policies that governments may use to improve tax collections. We first describe an approach that is based on a single individual pursuing a single motivation by choosing a single method (tax evasion) and operating in a single country. This perspective has generated important insights, but it nonetheless has significant limitations. As a result, we then argue that this perspective must be expanded to include additional actors in the field, all pursuing additional motivations. We also expand our discussion to include additional methods of tax base erosion like tax avoidance and money laundering, as well as additional countries. We argue that explaining behavior and then devising appropriate policies requires incorporating all of these additional considerations. We also discuss the likely impact of technological innovations both on the ability of governments to collect taxes and on the ability of private agents to reduce their taxes. An important contribution of our paper is that we simulate the effects of all of these expansions to the basic model using a novel agent-based model that is fully grounded in theory and calibrated for 33 European economics. We use this model to simulate the impacts over time of various reforms, especially reforms that implement international information-sharing programs, by comparing tax base erosion in the absence of these reforms to erosion in their presence. Our simulation results demonstrate the importance of using a fully specified theoretical model that goes well beyond the standard economics of crime approach when considering the effects of government policy innovations. We conclude with recommendations that can in principle reduce tax base erosion via evasion, avoidance, and money laundering in the current multi-dimensional environment as derived from the responsive regulation framework. However, these recommendations require a firm commitment from governments to their tax administrations, and these recommendations also cannot be introduced unilaterally by a single country but require international cooperation, especially via information sharing across borders.

中文翻译：

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使用“响应式监管”减少税基侵蚀

政府如何让个人和公司纳税，尤其是考虑到通过逃税、避税和洗钱导致税基侵蚀日益严重？在本文中，我们讨论了许多不同的观点来解释人们为什么缴纳和不缴纳税款，特别是基于“响应性监管”的观点，然后我们使用这些观点来提出政府可以用来改善税收征管的政策。我们首先描述了一种方法，该方法基于单个个人通过选择单一方法（逃税）并在单一国家开展业务来追求单一动机. 这种观点产生了重要的见解，但它仍然有很大的局限性。因此，我们认为必须扩大这一视角，以包括该领域的其他参与者，所有参与者都追求额外的动机。我们还扩大了讨论范围，包括其他税基侵蚀方法，如避税和洗钱，以及其他国家. 我们认为，解释行为然后制定适当的政策需要纳入所有这些额外的考虑因素。我们还讨论了技术创新对政府征税能力和私人机构减税能力的可能影响。我们论文的一个重要贡献是，我们使用一种基于代理的新型模型来模拟所有这些扩展对基本模型的影响，该模型完全基于理论并针对 33 个欧洲经济学进行了校准。我们使用这个模型来模拟各种改革随着时间的推移产生的影响，特别是实施国际信息共享计划的改革，通过比较没有这些改革的税基侵蚀与存在这些改革的侵蚀。我们的模拟结果表明，在考虑政府政策创新的影响时，使用远远超出标准犯罪经济学方法的完全指定的理论模型的重要性。我们总结了一些建议，这些建议原则上可以通过响应性监管框架得出的当前多维环境中的逃税、避税和洗钱来减少税基侵蚀。然而，这些建议需要政府对其税务机关作出坚定的承诺，而且这些建议也不能由一个国家单方面提出，而是需要国际合作，特别是通过跨境信息共享。