Disentangling Tax Evasion from Inefficiency in Firms Tax Declaration: An Integrated Approach

In this article we present a new methodology to support fiscal monitoring by the Italian Revenue Agency (IRA) with the aim of improving current taxpayers fiscal compliance and fighting tax evasion within small and medium enterprises. In fact, given the methodology behind the Sector Studies (Studi di Settore - SdS) system, there is room for firms to implement tax evasion strategies by simply adjusting revenues (and costs) toward an estimated average threshold (known ex-ante), the so called "presumptive" revenues, and achieving the fiscal "congruity" status. By estimating a production function through stochastic frontier analysis we avoid estimating the average threshold know ex-ante and can …