A General Characterization of Optimal Income Tax Enforcement
提出一种一般方法，刻画最优所得税与执法方案，阐明税率、审计概率与瞒报惩罚之间的相互作用，并指出执法中存在类似道德风险的公平与效率权衡。
This paper develops a general approach to characterizing optimal income tax and enforcement schemes. Our analysis clarifies the nature of the interplay between tax rates, audit probabilities and penalties for misreporting. In particular, it is shown that for a variety of objective functions for the principal the optimal tax schedule is in general concave (at least weakly) and monotonic; the marginal tax rates determine the audit probabilities; and less harsh penalties lead to higher enforcement costs. Our results imply that there exists a tradeoff between equity and efficiency considerations in the enforcement context which is similar to that in the moral hazard context for tax policy.