10.17889/E110335
Alstadsæter, Annette
Zucman, Gabriel
Johannesen, Niels
Replication data for: Tax Evasion and Inequality
ICPSR Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
2019
10.1257/aer.20172043
10.1257/aer.20172043
V0
Drawing on a unique dataset of leaked customer lists from offshore financial institutions matched to administrative wealth records in Scandinavia, we show that offshore tax evasion is highly concentrated among the rich. The skewed distribution of offshore wealth implies high rates of tax evasion at the top: we find that the 0.01 percent richest households evade about 25 percent of their taxes. By contrast, tax evasion detected in stratified random tax audits is less than 5 percent throughout the distribution. Top wealth shares increase substantially when accounting for unreported assets, highlighting the importance of factoring in tax evasion to properly measure inequality.