This section contains papers written by members of the IRS, as well as others, and presented at the 2004 National Tax Association Annual Conference. The views expressed in these papers are those of the authors and are not necessarily the official positions of the Internal Revenue Service. All papers are available as PDF files. A free Adobe Acrobat Reader is available for download, if needed. All Tables are available as Excel files. A free Excel Viewer is available for download, if needed. Citations are included in the papers. For more information about a paper, please send us an email message. Papers Audit Information Dissemination, Taxpayer Communication and Tax Compliance: An Experimental Investigation of Indirect Audit Effects PDF James Alm, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University; Betty R. Jackson, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado at Boulder; and Michael McKee, Department of Economics, University of Tennessee at Knoxville. March 2004. Taxpayer audits are a central feature of the voluntary compliance system in the United States federal individual income tax. Audits are thought to have a direct deterrent effect on the individuals actually audited. Multi-Agent Based Simulation of the Deterrent Effects of Taxpayer Audits PDF Kim M. Bloomquist, IRS, National Headquarters Office of Research. March 2004. As a tool of enforcement, tax audits are thought to have both direct and deterrent effects on taxpayers. The direct effect is simply the difference between the tax liability as determined by an examiner and the amount voluntarily reported by the taxpayer. Recent Research on Small Business Compliance Burden PDF John L. Guyton and Audrey Kindlon, IBM Business Consulting Services; Jian Zhou, IRS, National Headquarters Office of Research. March 2004. The IRS Office of Research is currently developing improved methods to measure and model U.S. small business federal taxpayer compliance burden. Tax Evasion and Entrepreneurship: The Effect of Income Reporting Policies on Evasion. An Experimental Approach PDF James Alm, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University; John Deskins, Center for Business and Economic Research, University of Tennessee; and Michael McKee, Department of Economics, University of Tennessee. March 2004. We use experimental economics methods to better understand personal income tax compliance behavior when a portion of an individual’s income is relatively difficult to detect by the tax authority. The Mismeasure of Man’s Well-Being: Refining Realized Income Measures with Wealth, Portfolio, and Mortality Information PDF Barry Johnson, IRS, Statistics of Income Division; and Jenny Wahl, Economics Department, Carleton College. March 2004. Economists and policymakers often rely on realized income to gauge individual well-being. Attractive for its ease of calculation, this measure is nonetheless seriously flawed, in part because people have some ability to choose how much income to realize at a given time. Papers by Year 2007 / 2006 / 2005 / 2004 / 2003 / 2002
