Optimal Audit Portfolio Design for a Tax Authority

偷税漏税是一种重要的经济和社会现象。HMRC对税收差距的最新估计将其置于400亿英镑的区域，约占总税收责任的8%。良好的税务管理对缩小这一差距至关重要，但在某些重要方面，现有的学术文献在这方面并不是特别有用。我的目标是构建一个科学合理的分析，至少部分地通过在好期刊上发表高质量的论文来验证。这项研究将是及时的（已向HMRC提供9亿英镑的额外资源，以解决2010年支出审查中的不合规问题），并将有助于实现政府目标。作为执法行动的一部分，税务机关实施了一系列纳税人审计。英国税务机关英国税务海关总署（HMRC）目前正在考虑引入一种新的“轻触”审计类别，以补充其传统上实施的更严格的审计类型。税务机关还实施有针对性的活动，需要首次获取第三方信息税务机关，然后与那些可能希望根据所获得的信息作出披露的纳税人进行书面沟通。纳税人在这场运动中以较低的欠税罚款率的形式获得了披露信息的激励。近年来，已经出现了一些这样的运动，包括三个针对拥有离岸账户的纳税人的运动，以及针对特定职业的运动。然而，学术文献尚未正确理解如何构建审计类型组合，以及活动优化设计背后的理论基础。就审计而言，这主要源于逃税标准模式中的一个简化假设，即当税务机关进行审计时，所有违规行为都会被自动发现。在实践中，一般有一个负面的关系，在发现不遵守审计的有效性和执行它的成本税务机关，拟议的研究将确定最有效的方式为税务机关设计的干预组合，以提高遵守。为了实现这一目标，将应用博弈论和行为经济学的混合见解。行为经济学将被用来了解个人纳税人将如何应对他们的合规行为作为税务机关的干预的结果。然后将博弈论应用于这些见解，以得出最佳的投资组合设计。分析将集中在纳税人和税务机关之间的战略互动-纳税人将如何应对特定的干预，以及，鉴于此，税务机关应如何优化设计干预类型的组合，以最大限度地提高预期税收。它将适应在收入、风险偏好和对合规的态度方面各不相同的纳税人。概述的组成部分将提供一个更令人信服的最佳执行政策方面的组合审计和活动的特点。它将提供一个丰富的框架，以探讨税务管理部门如何最好地设计其合规业务。对最佳审计的更广泛的见解可以应用于比税务合规更广泛的执法领域。将利用强大的基于代理的计算机模拟方法来探索涉及纳税人社交网络的分析的更复杂版本的预测，这些分析无法使用传统方法进行分析。我将开发的基于代理的技术在未来可以应用于行为经济学领域的大量问题。最终，该研究将产生高质量的学术论文和模拟程序，可供税务机关用于改善税收管理。

Tax evasion is an important economic and social phenomenon. The most recent HMRC estimate of the tax gap places it in the region of £40 billion, which is about 8% of total tax liability. Good tax administration is essential for reducing this gap, but in some important respects the existing academic literature is not particularly useful in this context. It is my objective to construct a scientifically sound analysis that will be validated, at least in part, by the publication of high quality papers in good journals. This research will be timely (£900 million of extra resource having been given to HMRC to tackle non compliance in the 2010 Spending Review) and will contribute to government objectives. As a part of their enforcement operations, tax authorities implement a portfolio of taxpayer audits. The British tax authority, HMRC, is currently considering introducing a new category of 'light-touch' audit to complement the more rigorous audit types it has traditionally implemented.Tax authorities also implement targeted campaigns that entail an initial acquisition of third-party information by the tax authority, followed by written communication with those taxpayers who might potentially wish to make to make a disclosure in the light of the information acquired. Taxpayers are offered an incentive to make a disclosure under the campaign in the form of a lower penalty rate on the tax owed. Recent years have seen a number of such campaigns, including three aimed at taxpayers with offshore accounts, and campaigns aimed at particular professions. However, the academic literature is yet to properly understand how a portfolio of audit types should be constructed, and the theoretical underpinnings behind the optimal design of campaigns. In the case of audits, this principally stems from a simplifying assumption in the standard model of tax evasion that, when the tax authority performs an audit, all non-compliance is automatically detected. In practice, there is generally a negative relationship between the effectiveness of an audit at detecting non-compliance and the cost of performing it to the tax authority.The proposed research will identify the most effective way for a tax authority to design a portfolio of interventions so as to enhance compliance. To achieve this, a mixture of insights from game theory and behavioural economics will be applied. Behavioural economics will be used to understand how individual taxpayers will respond in their compliance behaviour as a result of an intervention by the tax authority. Game theory will then be applied to these insights to derive the optimal portfolio design. The analysis will centre on the strategic interaction between taxpayers and the tax authority - how taxpayers will respond to a given intervention, and, given that, how the tax authority should optimally design a portfolio of intervention types so as to maximise expected tax revenue. It will accommodate taxpayers who are heterogeneous in income, risk preferences, and attitudes towards compliance. The components outlined will provide a more compelling characterisation of optimal enforcement policy with respect to a portfolio of audits and campaigns. It will provide a rich framework in which to pursue the question of how best a tax administration can design its compliance operations. The wider insights into optimal auditing can be applied to a wider set of enforcement domains than tax compliance. Powerful agent-based computer simulation methods will be utilised to explore the predictions of more complex versions of the analysis involving social networks of taxpayers, which cannot be analysed using conventional methods. The agent-based techniques I will develop can, in future, be applied to a large range of questions in the field of behavioural economics. Ultimately, the research will produce high quality academic papers, and simulation programs that can be used by tax authorities to improve tax administration.