Abstract The article focuses on experimental tax research. Experimental tax research has developed rapidly over the past 15 years and has addressed a wide variety of topics in tax practice and tax policy. Papers selected for the conference Journal of the American Taxation Association are noteworthy in that they serve to both illustrate the variety and to identify some of the principal methods employed in state-of-the-art tax research. Among issues addressed by authors of the works included in the volume are: how do tax subsidies impact research and development spending in a competitive environment, to what extent are taxpayers aware of their marginal tax rates and what variables impact taxpayers' beliefs about the marginal tax rates that they face, what variables affect an IRS revenue agent's decision to assess a negligence penalty on a taxpayer, what is the impact of prior knowledge on the information search and evaluation behaviors of tax professionals when performing research. To address these questions, authors employ diverse methods, including experimental economics, surveys, methods drawn from cognitive psychology and hypothetical case scenarios.
Jon S. Davis (Sat,) studied this question.