Tax Simplicity or Simplicity of Evasion? Evidence from Self-Employment Taxes in France

A much earlier version of this paper, not intended for publication, circulated under the title “Tax Simplicity and Heterogeneous Learning” as NBER Working paper 24049. The earlier working paper did not have panel data, which only subsequently became available to researchers, so this new paper provides a different analysis made possible by this data. The original working paper was in collaboration with Ufuk Akcigit, whose invaluable inspiration greatly contributed to shaping it and to whom we are indebted. We thank Salome Baslandze, Antonin Bergeaud, Pierre Boyer, Antoine Bozio, Antoine Ferey, Bertrand Garbinti, Johnathan Goupille-Lebret, Larry Katz, Henrik Kleven, Etienne Lehmann, Anasuya Raj, and participants at the NBER Entrepreneurship Summer Institute, Paris seminar participants for useful comments and feedback on the earlier version. Stantcheva gratefully acknowledges support from NSF CAREER Grant #1654517. Access to confidential data is offered by the CASD – Centre d’Accès Sécurisé aux Données. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• December 12, 2017
• May 3, 2024