The Role Of Digital Technologies In Combating Tax Evasion: A Comparative Legal Analysis
Abstract
Tax evasion represents one of the most acute challenges confronting contemporary public finance law, with annual revenue losses conservatively estimated at USD 500 billion globally—a figure that, in developing economies, routinely exceeds official aid receipts. The digitalization of the global economy has profoundly transformed this landscape, simultaneously generating sophisticated new avenues for evasion while enabling the emergence of what scholars have termed “Tax Administration 3.0”: a paradigm in which revenue authorities deploy advanced regulatory technologies—encompassing artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), big data analytics, blockchain architecture, and real-time electronic invoicing—to enforce fiscal compliance with unprecedented precision. This article examines how these digital technologies are reshaping the legal and institutional architecture of international tax enforcement, drawing on doctrinal legal analysis, empirical fiscal data, and institutional case studies from the OECD, European Union, and United States.