Who can afford to hire a construction worker to renovate their kitchen or repair their roof, pay them at the official rate and add GST and QST?

Who has ever resisted the offer to pay a reasonable price for a service by paying "under the table"? Who has never participated in undeclared work, an important component of what specialists call the underground economy?

How to define the latter? Does it cover smuggling and tax evasion activities? What are the methods commonly used to measure the underground economy? What is the extent of this in Quebec? What are the characteristics of individuals who carry out transactions as sellers or buyers? Which sectors are most affected? What is the share of legal activities not declared to the tax authorities? What about illegal activities? How does today's underground economy compare to that of the mid-1980s? What are the opinions and attitudes of Quebecers regarding this phenomenon? What are the main causes of undeclared work? Are the figures often reported in the media mythical or real?

The general objective of this book is to present the descriptive results of a recent survey on the underground economy based on a sample of more than 5,000 individuals aged 18 and over living in Quebec. The conclusions are often surprising. It is up to the readers to judge.

Five CIRANO researchers conducted this study: Bernard Fortin and Guy Lacroix, from the Department of Economics at Université Laval, Thomas Lemieux and Claude Montmarquette, from the Department of Economics at Université de Montréal, and Gaétan Garneau, research professional at CIRANO.

This monograph is available from
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