Tax compliance and firm response to electronic sales monitoring
研究加拿大某省强制餐厅安装销售记录模块后，企业销售额、费用和利润的变化，发现销售额增加但费用同步上升，应税收入基本不变，表明销售税执法会波及员工和供应商。
Abstract This paper analyzes how firms respond to an Internet of Things technology that reduces significantly the tax authorities' marginal cost of monitoring firm activity. More precisely, we analyze how mandating every restaurant of a single Canadian province to have sales recording modules (SRMs) affects restaurant sales, expenses and profits. We estimate that SRMs increase reported sales by 5.8% to 9.8% on average and that this increase is almost completely offset by an equal increase in expenses, including wages. As a result, the firms' taxable income remains mostly unchanged. Our results suggest that sales tax remittance enforcement at the firm level spills over to other firm stakeholders, such as employees and suppliers. Overall, the one‐time cost of the device needed to monitor sales more efficiently is small compared with the recurring benefits for tax authorities.