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We study what determines taxpayers’ deduction behavior when filing tax returns. Preliminary deficits might be viewed as losses assuming zero preliminary balance as reference point. Swedish taxpayers may escape these losses by claiming deductions after receiving information about the preliminary balance. Furthermore, the Swedish income tax system has a substantial kink (20 percentage points) where the central government tax applies. Taxpayers slightly above the governmental tax kink have substantially higher (standard economic) incentives to claim deductions than taxpayers slightly below the kink. Using a regression kink and discontinuity approach with individual fixed effects, we study a panel of 4.1 million Swedish taxpayers in 1999 to 2006. We find strong causal effects of preliminary deficits on the probability of claiming deductions. The initial empirical evidence for a kink in deduction probability at the central government threshold, anticipated by standard economic theory, is weaker but significant. However, a more detailed analysis reveals that the kink at the tax threshold is not likely due to the tax incentives per se. When controlling for the preliminary tax deficit, the kink at the tax threshold disappears. Taxpayers just above the tax kink are namely more likely to run a preliminary tax deficit than those just below it. Hence, the most plausible explanation also for the kink at the tax threshold is therefore loss aversion and not standard economic incentives. The Swedish taxpayers are thus “misbehaving”, in a Thaler (2015) sense, on two separate margins: they are highly loss averse but surprisingly inattentive to standard monetary incentives. JEL: C21,D91,H24,H26

This paper offers an explanation to why the general observation that elderly hold stronger moral attitudes than young ones may be an age rather than a cohort effect. We apply mechanisms from social psychology to explain how personal norms may evolve over the life cycle. We assume that people update their norms influenced by their own past behavior (e.g., cognitive dissonance) and/or by the attitudes of their peers (normative conformity). We apply the theory on actual norm distributions for young and old concerning tax evasion. Allowing for heterogeneous updating of norms where only those who identify with their network are actually conforming with it, while the others are only influenced by their own past behavior, we can explain the difference between young and old people’s moral values as an age effect through endogenous norm formation.

We analyze how habit formation affects optimal environmental taxation, when consumption of a habitual good causes a negative external effect on the environment. In a simple two-period model, we show that optimal taxation is still Pigouvian, where tax rates equal marginal damage in each period. However, the magnitudes of the tax rates are affected by habit formation. Using simulations we show that since consumption of the habitual good increases over time, so does the optimal tax rate, implying a higher tax rate in period two than in period one. The discrepancy increases in habitual strength. Given the development of the tax rates over time we discuss the welfare loss from imposing a secondbest environmental tax and its relation to habitual strength. Further, we analyze how optimal taxation changes if we relax the assumption of time-consistency

We find that through labeling one can significantly affect attitudes towards a tax. The gasoline tax meets a stronger reluctance than virtually the same tax when it is called the CO2 tax on gasoline.

We analyse Swedes’ opinions about the level of taxation for eleven different taxes to see what taxes people are most reluctant to and why. The most unpopular tax is the real estate tax, while the corporate tax is the least unpopular. We find a strong self interest effect in attitudes, and for corrective taxes information increases acceptance. We perform two case studies of Swedish tax policy and find political economy reasons for the recent abolition of the gift and inheritance taxes, and weak support for the ongoing green tax shift from labour to environmental taxes.

To what extent do people avoid taxes on intra-family transfers (be- quests and gifts), and how would integration (unification) of the dif- ferent transfers taxes affect tax avoidance? These issues are important for families and their welfare, as well as for governments and their pos- sibilities of raising revenue from transfer taxes. In this paper we study the effects of transfer taxes on altruistic parents’ transfers to their chil- dren. Using a theoretical model we find that altruistic parents do not necessarily tax minimize. However, in some cases when they do, there is an infinitely large excess burden of a transfer tax. We also find that integration of transfer taxes reduces tax avoidance. All tax avoidance is eliminated with complete integration.

Unless people pay the taxes they are obliged to pay, a general welfare state will eventually collapse. Thus, for the welfare state to survive in the long run, tax compliance is of utmost importance. Using Swedish individual survey data we analyze which factors affect the perception of tax evasion. The analysis is conducted on ten different taxes and the results differ widely. Hence, we show that it is important to study different taxes separately rather than treating tax evasion as one common phenomenon. In this paper we focus on the importance of different kinds of trust. Whether or not people in general are regarded as trustworthy only has a minor impact on perceived tax evasion. Instead, what matters is trust or distrust in politi- cians. People who distrust the parliament are more likely than others to think that tax evasion is common, and the result holds for most of the taxes studied. This may have severe long-run consequences for the welfare state. If people stop trusting their leading politicians, social norms about tax compliance deteriorate and the possibilities of collecting taxes for maintaining the welfare state are reduced.

We study the motives behind parents' transfers to their children, and the relationship between tangible transfers and educational investments. Another issue is the channels parents choose for tangible transfers. Do they use bequests and inter vivos gifts as substitutes or complements? We use a recent Swedish data set. It is superior to previously used data as it has information on both inheritances and gifts received. Our empirical analysis gives some support for parents having altruistic motive for their transfers. We also find evidence that parents use bequest and gifts as substitutes.

This is a theoretical study of human-capital accumulation, where parental, as well as public investments are essential. Policy influence rich and poor parents differently when they make educational decisions. Rich parents allocate resources efficiently between physical bequests and educational investments, while poor parents only afford investments in children’s human capital. Therefore, educational equality between rich and poor children is not necessarily promoted by further investments in public schooling. Moreover, I show that educational investments in low-skilled parents may have substantial spill-over effects on their children. Tax policy may also be used to influence human-capital accumulation, and I show that tax policy may have unexpected effects on the educational gap between rich and poor children.

The potential importance of the precautionary motive for saving has been noted in many studies during the last decades. This paper examines the determination of precautionary saving when people have access to intra-family risk sharing. I show that, with uncertain future income, altruism per se can induce time consistent, however, not necessarily ex ante efficient, risk sharing between risk averse spouses. The more altruistic the couple is, the closer is the solution to the efficient one. Also welfare and savings effects from social insurance turn out to be sensitive to assumptions about family structure. For risk sharing couples, the introduction of a compulsory insurance scheme may have substantially smaller effects on welfare and precautionary savings.