Revelation of Tax Evasion by Random Audits Report on Main Project, Part 2

Firms in three sectors have been subject to random audits by auditors of the Norwegian Tax Administration. The auditing has been carried out according to a detailed procedure securing that all auditors do all controls and file the results in the same manner. The auditing has been carried out in two steps, a simple and cheap control at step 1 and a comprehensive control at step 2. A test shows that the information obtained by the simple controls provides some indication of tax evasion revealed at step 2. Logistic regression analyses have been employed to test hypotheses about the effects on tax evasion of various characteristics of firms (size, age, location, use of external auditors etc. )