Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/192868 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Papers No. 886
Publisher: 
Statistics Norway, Research Department, Oslo
Abstract: 
In 2005, over 8% of Norwegian shareholders transferred their shares to new (legal) tax shelters intended to defer taxation of capital gains and dividends that would otherwise be taxable in the aftermath of 2006 reform. Using detailed administrative data we identify family networks and describe how take up of tax avoidance progresses within a network. A feature of the reform was that the ability to set up a tax shelter changed discontinuously with individual shareholding of a firm and we use this fact to estimate the causal effect of availability of tax avoidance for a taxpayer on tax avoidance by others in the network. We find that take up in a social network increases the likelihood that others will take up. This suggests that taxpayers affect each other's decisions about tax avoidance, highlighting the importance of accounting for social interactions in understanding enforcement and tax avoidance behavior, and providing a concrete example of “optimization frictions” in the context of behavioral responses to taxation.
Subjects: 
Tax avoidance
social interaction
networks
JEL: 
H26
H25
H32
L14
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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