By Tom G. Meling, Magne Mogstad, and Arnstein Vestre

We quantify the extent of crypto tax noncompliance and evasion, and assess the efficacy of alternative tax enforcement interventions. The context of the study is Norway. This context allows us to address key measurement challenges by combining de-anonymized crypto trading data with individual tax returns, survey data, and information from tax enforcement interventions. We find that crypto tax noncompliance is pervasive, even among investors trading on exchanges that share identifiable trading data with tax authorities. However, since most crypto investors owe little in crypto-related taxes, enforcement strategies need to be well-targeted or cheap for benefits to outweigh costs.

Chicago: University of Chicago, The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) , 2024. 69p.

By John Coyne and Teagan Westendorf

THis report helps develop an understanding of the quantum of profits being made and where in the value chain they occur. Australians spent approximately A$5.8 billion on methamphetamine and A$470 million on heroin in FY 2019.

Approximately A$1,216,806,017 was paid to international wholesalers overseas for the amphetamine and heroin that was smuggled into Australia in that year. The profit that remained in Australia’s economy was about A$5,012,150,000. Those funds are undermining Australia’s public health and distorting our economy daily, and ultimately funding drug cartels and traffickers in Southeast Asia.

One key takeaway from the figures presented in this report is that the Australian drug trade is large and growing. Despite the best efforts of law enforcement agencies, methamphetamine and heroin use has been increasing by up to 17% year on year. Falling prices in Southeast Asia are likely to keep pushing that number up, while drug prices and purity in Australia remain relatively stable.

Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2021. 40p.

By Jack A. Blum; Michael Levi; R. T. Naylor; and Phil Williams

While there has been a general trend towards enacting money-laundering laws that provide for the lifting of financial secrecy in appropriate cases, such secrecy remains a barrier in many jurisdictions, including some of those that have come to be known as 'financial havens'. The advances in technology and communication have made the three F's - finding, freezing and forfeiting of criminally derived income and assets all the more difficult. This publication discusses these issues and other related problems in depth. The law enforcement success stories presented convey a sense of imaginative ways in which financial havens are used. The cases also highlight the advantages, from the point of view of criminals, of collusion with bank employees and the use of professional launderers.

Vienna: United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, 1998, 117p.

Bringing Tax Money Back into the COFFERS. Edited by Brigitte Unger, Lucia Rossel, And Joras Ferwerda. “This book brings to bear the insights from various researchers, from various disciplines, from various institutions, and from various countries to ‘analyse the impact of the new international regulations on the scope of tax evasion, tax avoidance, and money laundering’, as stated in the Introduction. The chapters in this book represent the fruits of the EU Horizon Project, ‘Combating Fiscal Fraud and Empowering Regulators’ (COFFERS), led by Brigitte Unger...” Oxford University Press (2021) 369p.