---
title: "Tax enforcement by algorithm (research idea)"
description: "Tax compliance and enforcement appear on 118 recent papers, and 23 of them carry a digital, big-data or AI keyword, led by China's digitalized tax administration. Tax authorities now match invoices, bank data and platform records automatically. Which taxpayers change behaviour, and does automated enforcement crowd out voluntary compliance?"
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/big-data-tax-enforcement
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/big-data-tax-enforcement.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
date: "2026-10-23"
updated: "2026-10-23"
status: "seed"
tags: ["accounting", "economics", "tax"]
keywords: ["tax enforcement", "tax compliance", "digitalization of tax administration"]
---

# Tax enforcement by algorithm

Tax compliance and enforcement appear on 118 recent papers, and 23 of them carry a digital, big-data or AI keyword, led by China's digitalized tax administration. Tax authorities now match invoices, bank data and platform records automatically. Which taxpayers change behaviour, and does automated enforcement crowd out voluntary compliance?

## What prompted this

Since October 2025, 118 papers carry a tax-enforcement, tax-compliance, tax-administration or tax-audit keyword (53 in economics journals, 40 in finance, 15 in accounting): "tax compliance" on 49, "tax enforcement" on 34, "digitalization of tax administration" on 9, "Golden Tax Project" on 6. Twenty-three of the 118 also carry a digital, big-data, machine-learning or e-invoicing keyword.

## Questions

- When electronic invoicing becomes mandatory, how much does reported revenue rise, and does the effect fade as firms learn the system's blind spots?
- Does algorithmic audit selection target the right taxpayers, and does it create perceptions of unfairness that reduce voluntary compliance?
- Do firms respond to data-driven enforcement by moving to cash, to informality or across borders?

## Data that could help

Firm-level tax data around the phase-in of electronic invoicing (China's Golden Tax Phase IV, e-invoicing mandates in Italy, India and Latin America), audit selection records where available.

## Next step

Use the staggered roll-out of mandatory e-invoicing across regions in one country to measure changes in reported revenue and VAT.

## Related research activity

*The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26*

| Keyword | Papers, last 30 days | Rank | Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| tax enforcement | 1 | #2881 | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2, 3, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 6, 1, 2, 1, 3, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 3, 1, 2, 1, 1 | 67 |
| tax compliance | 4 | #525 | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 3, 5, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 2, 0, 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 1, 5, 2, 5, 5, 0, 1, 3, 5, 7, 6, 7, 2, 2, 4 | 98 |
| digitalization of tax administration | 1 | #2881 | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 2, 2, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 2, 1, 1, 0, 2, 0 | 21 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Tax enforcement by algorithm. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/big-data-tax-enforcement

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-big-data-tax-enforcement,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Tax enforcement by algorithm},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/big-data-tax-enforcement}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).