Tax evasion: models with self-audit (Q732808)

Supervision with self-audit is a combination of audit by the taxpayer himself and audit by the tax authority. This paper studies a taxpayer's optimal policy of tax evasion under supervision with self-audit and its related properties. Assuming that only a certain proportion of evaded tax can be discovered when the audit is executed, the authors consider a two-stage model with self-audit. In the first stage, taxpayers declare their taxes, then the tax authority chooses audit objects, based on a known probability, and announces the result; if the taxpayer is chosen, he will enter the second stage, during which he has a chance to pay the evaded tax and the corresponding late fees and then is audited by the tax authority. The authors show the existence and uniqueness of the optimal amount of tax evasion at the first stage and the optimal proportion to self-expose at the second stage.