Collaborative Research on the Relationship between Income Tax Auditing and Compliance

所得税审计与合规关系的协同研究

• 批准号: 8701227
• 负责人: Louis Wilde
• 金额: $ 11.2万
• 依托单位: California Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1988
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1988-03-15 至 1990-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=8701227&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Relationship; between; Income

Tax noncompliance is widely recognized to be an extremely serious problem. Recent estimates suggest that at least $90 billion of taxable income goes unreported annually--an average of 10 to 15 percent of total taxable income. Concern about declining tax compliance has produced an outburst of policy and academic writing, but both the causes and the appropriate responses remain controversial. Early tax compliance literature treated tax compliance as a "portfolio problem," deriving rules for optimal consumption of the "risky asset" (unreported income) under the assumption that the probability of detection is fixed. These models produced ambiguous results. More recent theoretical innovations have attempted to move out of the decision-theoretic framework to a principal-agent problem and game-theoretic model. In these approaches the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is allowed to act strategically, conditioning its audit rules on the information it receives from taxpayers. These interactive models, developed by Wilde, Reinganum and Graetz under a previous NSF grant, yield predictions about the nature of the equilibrium audit rule used by the IRS and the equilibrium reporting rule used by taxpayers. The purpose of this research is to test a game-theoretic model and to develop empirical evidence on the relationship between audits and compliance. Three distinct data sets are analyzed: (a) a cross-section data set related to 1969 individual Federal Income Tax returns, which was assembled by the IRS in the seventies; (b) a cross-section, time series data set related to state-level variables for the period 1969-1985; and (c) a data set related to 1979 TCMP individual return items, which was recently assembled by the IRS. The major question to be addressed is whether, and in what fashion, audit rates respond interactively to the compliance behavior of taxpayers. The introduction of IRS as a strategic actor is considered to be a significant improvement in the economic theory of law enforcement generally. The behavioral framework of tax non- compliance makes it an especially appropriate case for an empirical test of the theoretical construct that explicitly takes into account the interactions and responses of the cognizant law enforcement agency. The research is of substantial scientific significance in that it promises not only to offer insights on an important policy issue but also to add powerfully to fundamental knowledge of the conditions that engender conformance to law.

税务违规被广泛认为是一个极其严重的问题。 最近的估计表明，每年至少有 900 亿美元的应税收入没有报告——平均占应税收入总额的 10% 到 15%。 对税收合规性下降的担忧引发了政策和学术著作的爆发，但其原因和适当的应对措施仍然存在争议。 早期的税收合规文献将税收合规视为“投资组合问题”，在检测概率固定的假设下推导出“风险资产”（未报告收入）的最佳消费规则。 这些模型产生了不明确的结果。 最近的理论创新试图从决策理论框架转向委托代理问题和博弈论模型。 在这些方法中，国税局（IRS）可以采取战略性行动，根据从纳税人那里收到的信息来调整其审计规则。 这些交互式模型是由 Wilde、Reinganum 和 Graetz 在之前的 NSF 拨款下开发的，可以对 IRS 使用的均衡审计规则和纳税人使用的均衡报告规则的性质进行预测。 本研究的目的是测试博弈论模型并开发审计与合规性之间关系的经验证据。 分析了三个不同的数据集：(a) 与 1969 年个人联邦所得税申报表相关的横截面数据集，该数据集由 IRS 在 70 年代收集； (b) 与 1969-1985 年期间各州一级变量有关的横截面时间序列数据集； (c) 与 1979 年 TCMP 个人退货项目相关的数据集，该数据集最近由 IRS 收集。 要解决的主要问题是审计率是否以及以何种方式与纳税人的合规行为交互反应。 国税局作为战略参与者的引入被认为是执法经济理论的重大进步。 税收违规的行为框架使其成为对理论结构进行实证检验的特别合适的案例，该理论结构明确考虑了认知执法机构的相互作用和反应。 这项研究具有重大的科学意义，因为它不仅有望提供对重要政策问题的见解，而且还能有力地增加有关遵守法律的条件的基础知识。