Time: Jan. 14 (Fri.), 10:00 -11:30 am

Title: Does Consumer Monitoring Reduce Corporate Tax Evasion Along the Supply Chain? Evidence from Mongolia

On Zoom

About the Speaker:

Tsogsag Nyamdavaa is an assistant professor at the Department of Economics at Hitotsubashi University. Her research focuses on Public Economics, Public Finance and Development Economics. She obtained my PhD in Economics from the LSE.

Abstract：

This paper tracks the effects of consumer monitoring on firms’ tax evasion up the supply chain. To do so, I study a Mongolian government program, which incentivises consumers to report their purchases. First, I estimate the effect of the program on corporate income tax (CIT) and value-added tax (VAT), by comparing retailers who are directly affected, and wholesalers, who are only indirectly affected. I find that retailers increase their reported sales, but partly offset this by inflating their costs on CIT returns. As a result, retailers’ CIT liabilities increase by 11%. In comparison, their VAT liabilities increase by 31% because VAT is less prone to such cost manipulation. Second, I find that the program also increases the VAT liabilities of upstream firms by about 15% when they are more likely to sell to (monitored) retailers, compared to the upstream firms that sell to firms that are not directly monitored. The program does not, however, affect the upstream firms’ reported CIT liabilities. My findings highlight the enforcement advantage of VAT compared to CIT and that consumer monitoring enhances the self-enforcing mechanism in VAT.