Real Firms in Tax Systems

Economic analysis of taxation often assumes a homogeneous, usually perfectly competitive production sector in which individual firms are immaterial. This paper discusses some recent developments bringing key characteristics of real firms into the analysis of tax systems, which include enforcement rules and remittance regimes alongside tax rates and bases. Introducing more realistic firms into the analysis of tax systems has enabled progress in understanding the role of information in tax administration, the tradeoff between production efficiency and minimizing the administrative costs of tax collection, the consequences of remittance responsibility, and the fundamental role of firm heterogeneity in tax incidence.