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Social and Behavioral Sciences

Colin C Williams

Labor economics

Publication Year

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Full-Text Articles in Taxation

Explaining And Tackling Under-Declared Employment In Fyr Macedonia: The Employers Perspective, Colin C. Williams, Slavko Bezeredi Oct 2018

Explaining And Tackling Under-Declared Employment In Fyr Macedonia: The Employers Perspective, Colin C. Williams, Slavko Bezeredi

Colin C Williams

The aim of this paper is to evaluate how employers who illegally under-report their employees’ salaries to
evade paying the full tax and social contributions owed can be explained and tackled. These employers have
been conventionally explained as rational economic actors doing so when the benefits outweigh the costs,
and thus the solution is to increase the sanctions and/or probability of detection. An alternative social actor
approach, however, explains employers as under-reporting salaries because of their lack of both vertical trust
(i.e., their beliefs are not in symmetry with the laws and regulations) and horizontal trust (i.e., they believe
many …


Evaluating Policy Approaches Towards Undeclared Work: Some Lessons From Fyr Of Macedonia, Colin C. Williams Oct 2018

Evaluating Policy Approaches Towards Undeclared Work: Some Lessons From Fyr Of Macedonia, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

To tackle undeclared work, the conventional rational economic actor approach
uses deterrents to ensure that the costs of engaging in undeclared work outweigh
the benefits. Recent years have seen the emergence of a social actor approach
which focuses upon improving tax morale. To analyse the association between
participation in undeclared work and these policy approaches, 2,014 face-toface
interviews, conducted in FYROM in 2015, are reported. Logistic regression
analysis reveals no association between participation in undeclared work and the
perceived level of penalties and risk of detection, but there is an association with
the level of tax morale. The paper concludes …


Tackling Undeclared Work In Croatia: Knowledge-Informed Policy Responses, Colin C. Williams, Peter Rodgers, Ruslan Stefanov Aug 2017

Tackling Undeclared Work In Croatia: Knowledge-Informed Policy Responses, Colin C. Williams, Peter Rodgers, Ruslan Stefanov

Colin C Williams

KEY POINTS
Ø  Undeclared work has deep roots in Croatia. One in eleven declare to have done some fully undeclared work. Six out of ten though believe at least 20% of their compatriots violate tax and labour laws.
Ø  The perception of the widespread nature of undeclared work and the lack of trust in formal institutions seem to be the main incentives for people to engage in undeclared work. These have been exacerbated by high unemployment and low retirement income.
Ø  Hence, the conventional rational actor approach to tackling undeclared work that focuses upon increasing penalties …


Tackling The Urban Informal Economy: Some Lessons From A Study Of Europe’S Urban Population, Colin C. Williams, Ioana Horodnic Jun 2017

Tackling The Urban Informal Economy: Some Lessons From A Study Of Europe’S Urban Population, Colin C. Williams, Ioana Horodnic

Colin C Williams

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the
most effective way of tackling the urban informal
economy. It has been recently argued that the
conventional rational economic actor approach
(which increases the costs of participating in the
urban informal economy so that they outweigh
the benefi ts) should be replaced or complemented
by a social actor approach which focuses
upon improving tax morale. To evaluate the effectiveness
of these supposedly alternative approaches
to tackling the participation of urban
populations in the informal economy, we report
the results of face-to-face interviews conducted
in 2013 with 17,886 urban dwellers across the …


Developing A Holistic Approach For Tackling Undeclared Work: Background Paper, Colin C. Williams Nov 2016

Developing A Holistic Approach For Tackling Undeclared Work: Background Paper, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

What is a holistic approach to tackling undeclared work? A holistic policy approach towards tackling the undeclared economy uses in a strategic and coordinated manner the full range of both the direct and indirect policy approaches and measures available to increase the power of, and trust in, authorities respectively.
 
Direct approachesreduce the costs and increase the benefits of operating on a declared basis, and increase the costs and reduce the benefits of operating undeclared. To do this, it uses:
·      Deterrence measures that detect and punish participation in undeclared work firstly, by increasing the perceived or actual …