(A)Voiding the Fiscal Contract: How Tax Noncompliance by the Rich Constrains Redistribution

Tax noncompliance is often modeled as an individual-level act, but when noncompliance concentrates at the top of the income distribution it functions as a structural constraint on what redistribution can do. (A)Voiding the Fiscal Contract develops that claim using disclosure data on high-end tax avoidance in Australia, mapped at the regional level to characterize how avoidance patterns vary across the country. The paper traces how concentrated tax avoidance by the rich erodes the budgetary room available for downstream redistributive policy, and asks what that implies for the political feasibility of progressive taxation when high-end exit is easy.