Higher taxes, more evasion? Evidence from border differentials in TV license fees

Berger, Melissa and Fellner-Röhling, Gerlinde and Sausgruber, Rupert and Traxler, Christian (2016) Higher taxes, more evasion? Evidence from border differentials in TV license fees. Journal of Public Economics, 135. pp. 74-86. ISSN 0047-2727

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Abstract

This paper studies the evasion of TV license fees in Austria. We exploit border differentials to identify the effect of fees on evasion. Comparing municipalities at the low- and high-fee side of state borders reveals that higher fees trigger significantly more evasion. Our preferred estimator indicates that a one percent increase in fees raises the evasion rate by 0.3 percentage points. The positive effect of fees on evasion is confirmed in different parametric and non-parametric approaches and survives several robustness checks.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	evasion / TV license fees / border tax diffrentials / regression discontinuity design
Classification Codes:	JEL H26, H27
Divisions:	Departments > Volkswirtschaft Departments > Volkswirtschaft > Finanzwissenschaft u öffentl. Wirtschaft Forschungsinstitute > Internationale Besteuerung
Version of the Document:	Accepted for Publication
Variance from Published Version:	Minor
Depositing User:	Elena Simukovic
Date Deposited:	19 Sep 2017 13:21
Last Modified:	11 Feb 2019 21:01
Related URLs:	Publisher
FIDES Link:	https://bach.wu.ac.at/d/research/results/74550/
URI:	https://epub.wu.ac.at/id/eprint/5756

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