Does Tax-Collection Invariance Hold? Evasion and the Pass-Through of State Diesel Taxes
研究发现，当逃税机会在不同经济主体间存在差异时，税收归宿会随征收方身份改变；通过分析美国各州柴油税征收点变化，发现从批发商征收比从零售商征收更能提高税负向消费者的转嫁程度，且税收收入增加，表明逃税是导致这一结果的原因。
In simple models, the incidence of a tax is independent of the identity of the remitting party. We illustrate that this prediction fails to hold if opportunities for evasion differ across economic agents. Second, we estimate how the incidence of state diesel taxes varies with the point of collection, where the remitting party varies across states and over time. Moving tax collection upstream from retailers substantially raises the pass-through of diesel taxes to consumers. Furthermore, tax revenues increase when collecting taxes from wholesalers rather than from retailers, suggesting that evasion is the likely explanation for the incidence result.