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APRIL 15 SYNDROME
Author(s) -
SLEMROD JOEL,
CHRISTIAN CHARLES,
LONDON REBECCA,
PARKER JONATHAN A.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
economic inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.823
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1465-7295
pISSN - 0095-2583
DOI - 10.1111/j.1465-7295.1997.tb01958.x
Subject(s) - ceteris paribus , proxy (statistics) , economics , payment , income tax , monetary economics , actuarial science , business , public economics , microeconomics , finance , machine learning , computer science
In tax year 1988, delaying filing income tax returns cost the 73.2 million taxpayers claiming refunds nearly one billion dollars of interest. “Impatient” tax filers, who mail in their tax payments before the filing deadline, passed up $46 million in interest. We develop a model of tax filing based on stochastic opportunity cost, and then investigate whether filing times are consistent with that model. We find some evidence for this because, ceteris paribus, higher refunds are associated with earlier filing and complex returns are associated with later filing, as are higher incomes (as a proxy for higher costs of time).