Victor Pouliquen and his co-author Oyebola Okunogbe have been awarded the 2022 best paper award for their paper "Technology, Taxation, and Corruption: Evidence from the Introduction of Electronic Tax Filing," published in the American Economic Association's journal the AEJ: Economic policy in February 2022.
In the paper the authors examine the impact of replacing in-person tax filing to officials with electronic filing. Using data from nearly 1,500 small and medium-sized businesses in Tajikistan, they found that e-filing reduced the time spent on taxes by 40 percent. While the new technology doubled the taxes paid by firms previously more likely to evade, it reduced tax payments among those previously less likely to evade. The researchers say that these patterns are consistent unequal treatment by tax officials towards businesses prior to the adoption of e-filing.
