State Income Tax Amnesties: Causes

Abstract

This paper analyzes empirically for the years 1980-1988 the factors that led states with state income taxes to run tax amnesty programs. We find that the potential yield from an amnesty is more important than the fiscal status of a state. Furthermore, we estimate that if the 1RS audit rate had remained constant during the 1980–1988 period (instead of falling by almost one half), then the cumulative probability that an average state would have had a tax amnesty by 1988 would have fallen by just over 25 percent.