Tax evasion, tax burden and economic development in asean-5 economies: A mimic model analysis

Tax evasion is a crime. Recent estimates registered the loss of tax revenue amounting to USD3.1 trillion or 5.1% of world's GDP. Tax revenue losses have negative consequences to the government ability to fuelled economic growth by providing enough public infrastructure and other services. In this study we have estimated the share of shadow economy to the official economy for five ASEAN economies, namely; Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand for the period 1980–2013 using the MIMIC model. The indexes of the shadow economy from the MIMIC model were then used to calculate the loss in tax revenue as a result of the presence of the shadow economy. We then test the hypothesis that the level of economic development and tax burden play an important role in mitigating tax evasion. Our results indicate that increasing economic development and tax burden in all five ASEAN economies Malaysia increased tax evasion for the period 1980 to 2013.