Corporate Tax Evasion: the Case for Specialists

We analyze the role of accounting specialists who help corporations evade/avoid taxes in a game of incomplete information played by a tax authority, corporate taxpayers, and an accounting specialist. In addition to a full equilibrium characterization, we establish that (i) marginal changes in enforcement are not effective when evasion/avoidance is pervasive; (ii) fi�nes on fi�rms as opposed to specialists are more effective in such situations; (iii) reducing auditing costs and increasing "creative accounting" costs are effective in curbing evasion when tax compliance is relatively high