Resumen: We study behavioral responses to personal wealth taxes in Colombia using tax microdata (1993-2016) linked with the leaked Panama Papers, which shed light on offshoring to Colombia’s most relevant tax havens. We leverage variation from four reforms that modified the wealth tax design—tax duration and rate schedule—and introduced discrete jumps in the tax liability. Using bunching and difference-in-difference techniques, we obtain four key results. First, we find salient and compelling evidence that wealth tax hikes cause taxpayers to lower their reported wealth instantly—a reporting response that slashes, at most, one-fifth of tax revenue. Second, this response can persist even after the wealth tax no longer applies—i.e., “hysteresis"—reflecting taxpayers’ strategic avoidance behavior. Third, taxpayers misreport what authorities cannot cross-verify: they inflate (interpersonal) debt and underreport non-third-party-reported business assets. Lastly, the wealthiest taxpayers also respond to wealth tax hikes by hiding assets in hard-to-track entities in tax havens.

Acerca del presentador: Juliana Londoño Vélez es profesora asistente en el Departamento de Economía de la Universidad de California en Los Ángeles e investigadora asociada al NBER, J-PAL, CEGA y CCPR. Juliana trabaja en temas de desigualdad y políticas redistributivas, con un interés particular en los sistemas de impuestos y transferencias en América Latina. Ha sido consultora para el Banco Mundial, la OCDE y el Ministerio de Hacienda en Colombia. Juliana es economista de la Universidad de Los Andes y doctora en Economía de la Universidad de California en Berkeley.