Sarah B. Lawsky (UC-Irvine) presents  Modeling Tax Law’s Uncertainty at Sen Diego today as part of its Tax Law Speaker Series:

This article presents a formal model of tax compliance that, unlike other models of tax compliance, takes into account that the decision of whether to comply with the tax law is a decision under uncertainty. That is, a taxpayer deciding whether to comply faces a series of unknown probabilities: he does not know, for example, the probability that he will be selected for audit, the probability that the government will identify a particular questionable tax position, or the probability that this position will ultimately be struck down. The model presented incorporates both the extent of a taxpayer’s uncertainty and the taxpayer’s attitude toward uncertainty, and thus casts new light on controversial questions in tax compliance, such as how to structure penalties and whether to penalize tax advisors.

Update: Due to the Southern California power outage, Sarah’s workshop has been cancelled.