Nontariff barriers, trading companies and customs duties evasion

Resumo

This paper leverages an exogenous tariff reform in Brazil with rich administrative data to document the elasticity of customs duties evasion (ECDE) for the universe of importers in Brazil. We focus on the role of two modulators of ECDE: (i) nontariff barriers (NTB) and (ii) trading companies. Our findings are threefold. First, we estimate the elasticity of misreported imports to be larger than that in comparable literature. Controlling for misclassification, our results suggest an increase of 2.43% in evasion for each percentage point increase in tariff rate for missing values and 1.45% for missing quantities. Second, NTBs can reduce the elasticity of evasion up to 0.91 and -0.06, for value and quantity, respectively. This finding reinforces the NTB’s stricter enforcement role due to its papertrail. Third, we find no evidence that trading companies evade differently than other importers. Auditing policies and reputation concerns are investigated.

Ficha do documento

Tipo

Estudo

Ano

2022

Instituição

Escola de Economia de São Paulo

Fonte

Repositório da FGV

Idioma

Inglês

Acesso

Acesso aberto

Identificador

oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/32994

Temas

Economia

Palavras-chave

Tariff evasionTax enforcementNontariff barriersTrading companiesEconomiaComércio internacionalBarreiras não-tarifáriasEmpresas comerciais importadoras