This article evaluates the prevalence of different types of under-declared waged employment (i.e. a monthly fixed cash supplement to the official declared wage; a varying cash supplement to the official declared wage in line with professional achievements; a varying cash supplement to the official declared wage based on hours worked, and occasional undeclared cash payments such as holiday allowances, 13th month wage, bonuses), how they can be explained and the policy measures effective at curbing these different practices.
Data are reported from the 2019 special Eurobarometer survey on undeclared work conducted across the European Union and the United Kingdom.
Using logistic regression, the finding is that the likelihood of engaging in the different types of under-declared waged employment is higher with lower tax morale, lower institutional trust and lower trust in other peers to be compliant, with some variations between the different types. The level of sanction is not associated with the different types of under-declared waged employment. Conversely, increasing the perceived risk of detection has the unexpected effect of increasing participation in under-declared waged employment at least for two types of such employment. Analysing who engages in each of these types of under-declared waged employment reveals differences among the population groups, without confining participants to vulnerable groups.
This is the first article to evaluate participation in the different types of under-declared waged employment and how each can be explained and tackled.
