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CMU-ISR-09-125
Institute for Software Research
School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
CMU-ISR-09-125
Predicting intentional Tax Error Using
Open Source Literature and Data
Ju-Sung Lee, Kathleen M. Carley
November 2009
CMU-ISR-09-125.pdf
Center for the Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational
Systems
CASOS Technical Report
Keywords: Tax evasion, non-compliance, intentional error, meta
analysis
Intentional non-compliance in providing accurate income tax returns, also
known as "tax evasion" or "intentional error", has been studied from both
attitudinal and socio-demographic perspectives. A significant portion of
previous research employs a common set of indicators, which we can exploit
by pooling meta-analytically with the hopes of obtaining a unified,
well-predicting model of intentional error. Towards this end, we turn
to a large, nationally representative data source, namely the Census Bureau's
Public-Use Microdata Samples (PUMS), as our source of covariance between the
socio-demographic covariates of interest. Additionally, the same source offers
data on potential opportunities of evasion for each PUMS respondent (or
agent),
in certain line item/taxpayer categories, allowing us to construct distinct
error models for these categories. Furthermore, we extend the error model to
include attitudinal meta-analysis, by linking the General Social Survey (GSS)
to the PUMS through imputation of a GSS covariate that identifies respondents
who are more likely to break the law. Our meta-analysis requires an in-depth
re-analysis of the selection of previously published results on
non-compliance.
The result is a comprehensive model of non-compliance that fits historical,
published data and that can be applied generically and to specific tax
issues.
97 pages
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