The paper reviews recent models that have applied the techniques of behavioural economics to the analysis of the tax compliance choice of an individual taxpayer. The construction of these models is motivated by the failure of the Yitzhaki version of the Allingham–Sandmo model to predict correctly the proportion of taxpayers who will evade and the effect of an increase in the tax rate upon the chosen level of evasion. Recent approaches have applied non‐expected utility theory to the compliance decision and have addressed social interaction. The models we describe are able to match the observed extent of evasion and correctly predict the tax effect but do not have the parsimony or precision of the Yitzhaki model.

The issue of tax compliance costs continues to attract public attention throughout the OECD. This is particularly true in Australia, where major tax reforms are taking place. This paper reports on an ongoing research project on federal tax compliance costs conducted by a research team from the Australian Taxation Studies Program (ATAX) of the University of New South Wales. The focus of this paper is on the methodology of estimating taxation compliance costs. Some aggregate empirical findings, based on several large-scale mail surveys of over 10,000 personal and business taxpayers, will be reported. Major differences between the Australian and U.S. tax systems, as well as comparison with results obtained in previous UK and U.S. studies, will also be highlighted.

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More specifically, informal payments by Vietnam firms are shown to encourage overall innovation, product improvement innovation and new innovation. This is not entirely unexpected, in view of other findings reported in this special issue, and in view of the business practice of paying small informal fees to speed up transactions with the public sector in Vietnam. However, the findings also strongly implies that in the fight against corruption it is critically important to highlight (to firms) the true costs of corruption in the long run. ==============================