No. 186: Corporate Tax Planning and Technology-Based Enforcement

This study examines how strengthening tax enforcement by increasing human enforcement capacity and improving tax audit technology affect tax audit efficiency. I employ an economic model in which a tax manager’s tax planning effort shapes corporate tax planning and a strategic tax auditor makes a technology-based audit decision. I show that strengthening tax enforcement always increases tax revenues, but decreases the number of audits only under narrow conditions, so that its effect on tax audit efficiency is often ambiguous. Improving tax audit technology has more nuanced implications. When the strength of tax enforcement is sufficiently high, gradual improvements in tax audit technology crowd out audit incentives and, surprisingly, reduce tax revenues, while sufficiently large improvements can overturn this adverse revenue effect. At the same time, improved technology lowers unnecessary audits once the strength of tax enforcement exceeds a minimum level. Therefore, sufficiently large technology improvements improve tax audit efficiency once this minimum level is exceeded. The results have important policy and empirical implications in an environment of constrained fiscal budgets and rapidly advancing audit technologies.