Conference Agenda

This paper evaluates the scope and coverage of the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), an international automatic exchange of information regime intended to eliminate bank secrecy and reduce cross-border tax evasion. We obtain new, aggregated CRS data from 26 countries, covering roughly 30% of the global amount reported by the OECD for the year 2022. We first show that cross-border financial wealth continues to be concentrated in tax havens. We then combine our aggregate CRS data with recent estimates of offshore financial wealth to estimate the coverage of the CRS. Our results suggest a coverage rate ranging from 38 to 93% for the subsample of countries we have the most granular data from, highlighting scope for improvement. However, we also show that the volume of data exchanged internationally has increased and improved in quality substantially over recent years, giving reason for longer-term optimism.

We combine information from foreign financial institutions reported to the French tax authority as part of the AEoI with data from a voluntary disclosure program and individual tax returns to document five new facts about French households’ foreign wealth. First, about 6.8% of French financial wealth was held abroad in 2021, with a substantial share concentrated at the top of the income distribution. Second, reported foreign accounts and foreign financial income have risen markedly since the endorsement of automatic cross-border exchange of financial account information. Third, this rise is entirely driven by taxpayers who did not report the existence of a foreign account before the transparency policy was announced. Fourth, participation in the voluntary disclosure program explains a large share of these dynamics, indicating that disclosures constitute a key margin of behavioural response to the policy change. Fifth, among disclosers, self-reported information closely matches information reported by foreign financial institutions.

This paper examines the role of professional tax advisors in a personal income tax system with relatively low complexity. Using population-wide administrative data from South Africa (2011–2018) and a matched difference-in-differences design, we estimate the causal effect of first-time tax preparer use on individual tax outcomes. We find that taking up a tax advisor leads to a persistent reduction in reported tax liabilities of about 3.6 percent, consistent with reduced information and compliance frictions and improved use of deductions and credits. Absolute tax savings rise strongly with income, while proportional effects are similar across the distribution. Higher-quality advisors generate larger effects, but the aggregate impact on tax progressivity and after-tax inequality remains modest.

This paper studies how administrative tax simplification affects tax burdens and behavior among recent migrants. We exploit Norway’s 2019 introduction of the Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) scheme, which allows eligible foreign workers to opt into a flat 25 percent withholding tax that eliminates filing requirements and deductions. Using population-wide administrative data and simulated counterfactual tax liabilities under the ordinary progressive system, we examine how PAYE reshapes effective tax rates and short-run outcomes. The reform strongly compresses the distribution of effective tax rates, generating a mass point at the statutory rate. This compression is asymmetric: many low- and middle-income migrants pay more under PAYE, increasing average effective tax rates by 2.25 percentage points. Because participation is voluntary, remaining in PAYE reveals a willingness to trade higher taxes for simplicity. A regression discontinuity design around the eligibility cutoff shows sharp tax differences but no short-run effects on employment, earnings, or migration outcomes.