Gender Differences in Tax Evasion: Evidence from Norwegian Administrative Data

Abstract Using the expenditure approach and administrative data on third-party reported donations, we estimate tax evasion by gender. While men are more prone to risk-taking, we find no evidence of this affecting income underreporting among the self-employed in Norway. Instead, self-employed women evade more than men. This holds when controlling for sector and using household fixed effects and event study equivalents. We find that self-employed women face lower chances of penalty taxes and lighter penalties when caught, possibly due to biased predictive models, which may explain their higher evasion rates.