Emerging economies collect substantially less tax revenue relative to national income than advanced economies, and a large share of this shortfall reflects weak enforcement capacity rather than statutory rates. Digital audio technologies and integrated financial information systems are increasingly promoted as instruments for narrowing this gap, yet the evidence on whether, when, and how they raise compliance and transparency remains scattered across public economics, accounting, and information systems scholarship. This review synthesises empirical and conceptual work published between 2006 and 2026 to assess what is known about four interlocking mechanisms: third party information reporting and electronic invoicing, electronic filing and payment platforms, continuous auditing and analytics, and distributed ledger and regulatory technology approaches to data governance. Three consistent patterns emerge. First, technologies that create verifiable third-party information trails produce the most durable compliance gains, with value added tax self-enforcement, electronic sales registers, and consumer incentive schemes generating measurable revenue increases, while technologies that merely digitise existing processes without new information yield smaller and more fragile effects. Second, the revenue and transparency return to digital systems are conditional on administrative capacity, data quality, and political commitment rather than automatic, which explains why similar tools succeed in some jurisdictions and fail in others. Third, the accounting profession is moving from periodic sampling toward continuous assurance and population level analytics, but adoption in emerging economies lags because of skills, infrastructure, and governance constraints. These findings suggest that the design and sequencing of digital reforms matter more than the sophistication of the technology itself. The review offers tax administrators and policymakers evidence graded account of which interventions rest on strong causal evidence and which rest on weaker conceptual or cross sectional foundations, and it identifies the conditions under which digital instruments translate into sustained fiscal gains rather than symbolic modernization.
Aleksandar Stojkov, A. Maksimovska Stojkova, Elena Neshovska Kjoseva, Jovan Zafiroski
This study investigates how a territorially uneven distribution of informal economic activity affects subnational fiscal capacity and potentially distorts fiscal equalization systems. Using a Multiple Indicators, Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model, we estimate the size of the informal economy across the eight statistical regions of North Macedonia over the 2008–2023 period. The estimated shares of regional informality are subsequently linked to indicators of fiscal dependence and local revenue performance. The findings suggest that regions characterized by larger informal economies tend to exhibit greater dependence on intergovernmental transfers and weaker effective fiscal autonomy. The analysis further indicates that intergovernmental transfer systems relying primarily on regional gross domestic product and realized tax collections may systematically underestimate the true economic potential of highly informal jurisdictions. The paper contributes to the literature by conceptualizing informality not merely as an informal economic activity, but as a structural distortion affecting the measurement of fiscal capacity and the functioning of decentralized public finance systems.
The United States is facing a persistent and rising "tax gap," the discrepancy between taxes owed and taxes paid, that is a systemic failure of traditional retroactive audit procedures.As the complexity of digital financial transactions continues to expand, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) faces serious hurdles from aging infrastructure in providing revenue assurance.In this research, we present a new technical framework, namely the "Smart-Tax Ledger", combining a permissioned blockchain (Hyperledger Fabric) and Gradient Boosted Decision Trees (GBDT) for the real-time tax compliance.This architecture facilitates the automation of tax withholding and remittance at the point of transaction, leveraging triple-entry accounting principles and smart contracts.Also, the use of Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) safeguards the integrity of the distributed ledger and preserves taxpayer privacy.This work presents a complete architectural design, mathematical modeling of fraud detection algorithms, and a debate on the policy implications of the adoption of a "compliance-by-design" paradigm.The system, which is supposed to reduce administrative cost, limit human mistake and fill the national revenue deficit by technical intervention.
Execution Tickets (ET) have emerged as a leading proposal for mitigating MEV-related centralization risks by internalizing MEV through a protocol-level lottery system. This paper provides an empirical game-theoretic analysis (EGTA) of the ET mechanism under an infinite-supply design, modeled as a Tullock contest. We evaluate a 2-slot lookahead window as a minimal temporal design that limits multi-slot MEV while preserving support for user pre-confirmations. By introducing a forfeiture parameter, we parameterize a continuum between All-Pay and Winner-Pay regimes. We then map the fairness-revenue frontier, revealing a fundamental design tension: higher contest decisiveness and forfeiture rates can improve protocol revenue, but may reduce allocation fairness by entrenching dominant builders. We identify a quantitative Goldilocks zone that balances MEV-capture efficiency with market diversity.
Putri Anggia, Aisyah Ajeng Putri Riyanto, Muhammad Fathi
The rapid growth of cryptocurrencies is reshaping the global financial landscape, challenging traditional systems of taxation and regulation. This article examines the complex interplay between cryptocurrency anonymity, legal frameworks, and the pursuit of international tax justice. Using normative legal research with a descriptive approach, this article examined the challenges posed by cryptocurrency adoption in taxation policies. The findings revealed that while blockchain technology enhances transparency and decentralisation, the anonymity features of digital assets create risks of tax evasion and illicit financial flows. Addressing these issues requires integrated efforts among international regulatory frameworks, such as the OECD's CARF and FATF's Travel Rule alongside domestic reforms like Indonesia's HPP Law and the EU's DAC8. Inclusive governance that empowers developing countries and the constitutional grounding of tax justice principles are essential to strike a balance between individual privacy and collective fiscal responsibility. This multi-layered approach is critical to ensuring cryptocurrencies serve as instruments of innovation rather than tools for inequality. Future research should focus on empirical assessments of compliance costs, enforcement effectiveness across borders, and the development of privacy-preserving technologies, such as zero-knowledge proofs, to enable proportional and fair regulation globally.
This paper argues that India's Goods and Services Tax Network has already produced, through tax incentive rather than cryptographic consensus, the supply chain properties — traceability, transparency, fraud reduction, and audit trail — that the blockchain literature proposes to deliver through distributed ledger technology. The argument is not that blockchain does not work. It is that the mechanism that produces tamper-resistance is the incentive, not the technology, and India already has that mechanism at national scale. The paper's original theoretical contribution is a two-player simultaneous-move game formalizing the bilateral incentive structure that the VAT self-enforcement literature has assumed in prose but never derived from primitives. The unique Nash equilibrium (F,D) — formal supplier, demanding buyer — is obtained by iterated elimination of weakly dominated strategies and sustained by a single precise condition: τv > c_B, the input tax credit exceeds the buyer's cost of sourcing from a registered alternative. No audit is required at the transaction level. The ITC does the work that enforcement cannot. The upstream formalization cascade — empirically documented by Patnaik (2026) as a doubling of effects over five years — follows directly as this equilibrium applied iteratively upstream, tier by tier, without government intervention at each stage. To the author's knowledge, this micro-foundation does not appear elsewhere in the VAT literature. Pomeranz (2015), Kleven et al. (2011), and de Paula and Scheinkman (2010) treat the self-enforcement intuition as motivation or derive aggregate implications; none writes down the strategic form game or states the equilibrium condition in falsifiable form. The empirical case rests on scale. FY2024-25 gross collections of Rs. 22.08 lakh crore (approx. USD 263 billion). April 2025 single-month record of Rs. 2.37 lakh crore (approx. USD 28 billion). 1.51 crore active registered taxpayers. Six phases of e-invoicing threshold reduction from Rs. 500 crore to Rs. 5 crore, directionally toward universal pre-validated coverage. GST 2.0 implemented September 22, 2025. The Production Linked Incentive scheme disbursing billions to Apple's contract manufacturers on the basis of GSTN-verified production data — the sovereign proof that the infrastructure is trusted for the highest-stakes commercial verification the government performs. The implication for Indian FMCG, pharmaceutical, and logistics firms is direct: private blockchain consortia built to solve domestic supply chain transparency problems are solving a solved problem at non-zero cost.
This paper argues that India's Goods and Services Tax Network has already produced, through tax incentive rather than cryptographic consensus, the supply chain properties — traceability, transparency, fraud reduction, and audit trail — that the blockchain literature proposes to deliver through distributed ledger technology. The argument is not that blockchain does not work. It is that the mechanism that produces tamper-resistance is the incentive, not the technology, and India already has that mechanism at national scale. The paper's original theoretical contribution is a two-player simultaneous-move game formalizing the bilateral incentive structure that the VAT self-enforcement literature has assumed in prose but never derived from primitives. The unique Nash equilibrium (F,D) — formal supplier, demanding buyer — is obtained by iterated elimination of weakly dominated strategies and sustained by a single precise condition: τv > c_B, the input tax credit exceeds the buyer's cost of sourcing from a registered alternative. No audit is required at the transaction level. The ITC does the work that enforcement cannot. The upstream formalization cascade — empirically documented by Patnaik (2026) as a doubling of effects over five years — follows directly as this equilibrium applied iteratively upstream, tier by tier, without government intervention at each stage. To the author's knowledge, this micro-foundation does not appear elsewhere in the VAT literature. Pomeranz (2015), Kleven et al. (2011), and de Paula and Scheinkman (2010) treat the self-enforcement intuition as motivation or derive aggregate implications; none writes down the strategic form game or states the equilibrium condition in falsifiable form. The empirical case rests on scale. FY2024-25 gross collections of Rs. 22.08 lakh crore (approx. USD 263 billion). April 2025 single-month record of Rs. 2.37 lakh crore (approx. USD 28 billion). 1.51 crore active registered taxpayers. Six phases of e-invoicing threshold reduction from Rs. 500 crore to Rs. 5 crore, directionally toward universal pre-validated coverage. GST 2.0 implemented September 22, 2025. The Production Linked Incentive scheme disbursing billions to Apple's contract manufacturers on the basis of GSTN-verified production data — the sovereign proof that the infrastructure is trusted for the highest-stakes commercial verification the government performs. The implication for Indian FMCG, pharmaceutical, and logistics firms is direct: private blockchain consortia built to solve domestic supply chain transparency problems are solving a solved problem at non-zero cost.
The primary purpose is to trace the progression of scholarly research on cryptocurrency taxation, uncovering prevailing patterns, influential contributors, yearly scientific output and citations, most relevant sources, thematic analysis and cooccurrence networks from 2010 to 2025. Leveraging a systematic search on Scopus, our final dataset comprises 115 unique documents, with the majority of publications being highly recent (average age of 2.95 years) and exhibiting a robust annual growth rate of 18.65%. The analysis reveals that the field is highly collaborative (average of 2.7 co-authors per paper) and gaining significant scholarly attention, as evidenced by a promising average of 9.548 citations per document. The thematic structure of the literature, mapped through keyword co-occurrence and strategic diagrams, identifies "cryptocurrency," "blockchain," and "bitcoin" as the core, most central themes. The research is highly multidisciplinary, with a strong focus on regulatory, legal, and financial challenges surrounding taxation, anti-money laundering, and the classification of digital assets. While a dominant research source exists, the high dispersion of publications across 85 distinct sources suggests a fragmented but rapidly maturing field.
The enactment of the Nigeria Tax Act (NTA) 2025 represents a significant restructuring of the nation’s fiscal framework, aimed at capturing value within the borderless digital economy. This study provides a legal analysis of the updated "Significant Economic Presence" (SEP) rule under Section 17 of the Act, which shifts the taxable nexus from traditional physical presence (Permanent Establishment) to economic participation. By expanding the SEP framework, the NTA 2025 formalises the "digital shadow" of the workforce, explicitly including remote freelancers, digital consultants, and content creators within the tax net while mandating residency-based taxation on worldwide income. Additionally, the Act classifies profits from digital asset transactions, including cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), as taxable income. The analysis also examines the institutional transition from the Federal Inland Revenue Service to the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), emphasising the deployment of automated technologies for real-time reporting and collection. Despite these advancements, persistent challenges remain, including infrastructure deficits, enforcement complexities in peer-to-peer transactions, and the need to align with global standards such as the OECD’s Two-Pillar Solution. Ultimately, the study concludes that although the NTA 2025 modernises the fiscal social contract, its effectiveness in optimising revenue depends on institutional capacity and clear regulatory guidance.
This article examines the utilization of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) as a mechanism to address import customs tax evasion. The research employs a game-theoretic framework to examine the dynamics of tax evasion and assess the impact of blockchain on improving transparency, accountability, and compliance in customs administration. A systematic literature review process, adhering to PRISMA criteria, was utilized to gather and examine pertinent academic articles. The literature study examines critical subjects, such as the mechanisms of import tax evasion, the digital taxation framework, and the use of blockchain technology into tax systems. The study also examines the relevance of game theory in comprehending and addressing non-compliant behaviors among taxpayers. In the practical phase, we conducted a systematic review of a corpus exceeding 100 publications, obtained from three international research databases: Scopus, Taylor & Francis, and IEEE Xplore. Following the application of rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria to guarantee relevance, a concentrated selection of research constituted the foundation for our study. This research underscores the capacity of DLT to transform conventional evasion tactics, reduce corruption, and improve institutional efficacy in customs operations. Insights are contextualized through a worldwide comparison and an examination of the Moroccan customs scene, offering concrete recommendations for utilizing blockchain to modernize customs operations.
This paper provides a theoretical and methodological basis for aligning digital tax control technologies with tax policy principles in Russia and Tajikistan. This study’s value and innovation stem from tax control’s digital shift and linking tech to tax system principles. The object of the study is tax relations and tax administration practices in the digital transformation of public administration in the Russian Federation and the Republic of Tajikistan. The subject of the study is the theoretical and methodological foundations for aligning digital tax control technologies, such as big data, AI, distributed ledgers, the Industrial Internet of Things, and analytical platforms, with the fundamental principles of state tax policy. The research aims to develop the conceptual contours of the theoretical and methodological study and a mechanism for aligning digital tools and tax policy principles, as well as to identify the institutional, legal, axiological, and process conditions that determine the feasibility and limits of integrating digital control tools into the tax systems of Russia and Tajikistan. The study employed abstract and conceptual analysis, a source review and synthesis, theoretical modeling, and generic scientific methods . The author focused on analyzing and assessing digital tools’ compliance with legal, neutral, transparent, predictable, efficient, and fiscally sustainable principles. The work’s finding is a conclusion: there are methodological limitations in the digitalization of tax control. The author presented a conceptual system, highlighted research areas, and called for framework development. This study covers boosting strategic digital tax solutions, tax policies, the digital transformation of tax authorities, and digital tax control systems.
This letter evaluates Sennimalai Kalimuthu’s radical proposal to transition all private-sector employees across villages, towns, and cities into state government staff. By replacing decentralized private payrolls with a state-administered framework financed by direct corporate revenue routing, this structural model aims to eliminate working-class income precarity and geographical inequality. We outline a phased implementation strategy alongside a dual-metric performance tier to sustain workforce innovation under standardized civil service pay grades. Finally, we discuss macroeconomic trade-offs regarding fiscal sustainability, administrative friction, and the mitigation of capital flight under total labor nationalization.
Andreas KOLYDAS, Stamatis Kontsas, Stavros Kalogiannidis
The research aims to find out how cryptocurrency aids tax evasion in Greece, the socio-economic factors contributing to the practice, and the efficiency of the Greek taxation legislation in deterring such conduct. A total of 359 questionnaires were completed by respondents who engage in cryptocurrencies in Greece. Cross correlational statistical analysis and multiple regression analysis were used to test the relationship of cryptocurrency usage, anonymity, tax policies and socio-economic factors and their impact on tax evasion. Also, sociodemographic factors such as income levels and education levels greatly affected the ability to engage in tax evasion. The study provides a validation that the frequency of cryptocurrency usage, anonymity, ineffectual tax laws, socio-economic factors have a positive correlation with tax evasion rates and influence tax dodging in Greece. Based on the issues highlighted in this study, the following steps are advised for the improvement of the Greek anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism regime: i) improve the regulation and enforcement measures concerning cryptocurrencies, ii) enhance the transparency of the cryptocurrency transactions, and iii) address the socio-economic circumstances that enable tax evasion.
Abstract Taxation justice and fiscal federalism are foundational pillars for building an inclusive, democratic, and sustainable nation. As countries diversify economically and socially, the role of equitable taxation becomes central to financing public goods, reducing inequality, and strengthening socio-political cohesion. Fiscal federalism, which concerns the distribution of financial powers and resources across central, state, and local governments, further reinforces the principles of subsidiarity, autonomy, and accountability required in a modern democratic state. This research paper analyses how taxation justice and fiscal federalism contribute to nation-building, examines structural gaps in existing fiscal arrangements, and highlights the need for transparent resource allocation, participatory governance, and decentralized fiscal empowerment. Using qualitative secondary data and descriptive analysis, the study demonstrates that taxation systems that are equitable, efficient, and progressive combined with a well-designed fiscal federalism framework help strengthen democratic participation, reduce regional disparities, support sustainable development, and stabilize public finance. The paper concludes by offering policy recommendations to enhance the equity and efficiency of taxation systems, thereby improving fiscal governance and promoting inclusive nation-building.
The emergence of cryptocurrency has radically threatened traditional fiscal institutions, presenting Indian policymakers with an unrivaled challenge in tax administration and revenue generation. This review takes into account the multifaceted complexities of taxation of cryptocurrency in India, addressing regulatory uncertainties, enforcement issues, and the relevance for tax revenue composition. Drawing on policy trends and scholarly literature at the moment, the present paper investigates India's evolving stance on digital assets—from absolute skepticism to cautious engagement—and how this reflects deeper anxieties around innovation and control. The argument draws on strategic management, technology disruption within financial markets, and organizational change management to situate India's policy measures in context. Even as the 2022 budget introduced specific tax provisions for virtual digital assets, significant concerns continue to exist about mechanisms for compliance, global coordination, and long-term viability of prevailing strategies. India's cryptocurrency taxation regime is discovered to be in the early stages, with adaptive strategies required to reconcile revenue and technological innovation.
Cheap energy, absence of regulations on mining, low taxes, free industrial zones made Georgia an attractive place for Bitcoin mining and home to such big companies as Bitfury and Binance. This paper asks how and why Georgia become a crypto mining hub and examines crypto mining in relation to the neoliberal state and its economic development mode. This study frames crypto currency mining as a state facilitated development project, which is embedded in Washington Consensus (WC) liberalization and deregulation policies and is enabled by Wall Street Consensus (WSC) derisking policies. The paper argues that crypto currencies - once emerged on allegedly nonpolitical economic grounds to challenge the state and existing financial order - need the state and its sovereign space. The study also unfolds continuities between WC and WSC and demonstrates the destructive character of crypto mining. The paper thus challenges the claims of the crypto industry of being against the state and traditional financial system, provides insights into the political economy of Bitcoin from a peripheral country perspective and enriches ongoing debates on neoliberal derisking states.
The third Bitcoin halving that took place in May 2020 cut down the mining reward from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC per block and thus slowed down the rate of issuance of new Bitcoins, making it more scarce. The fourth and most recent halving happened in April 2024, cutting the block reward further to 3.125 BTC. If the demand did not decrease simultaneously after these halvings, then the neoclassical economic theory posits that the price of Bitcoin should have increased due to the halving. But did it, in fact, increase for that reason, or is this a post hoc fallacy? This paper uses synthetic control to construct a weighted Bitcoin that is different from its counterpart in one aspect - it did not undergo halving. Comparing the price trajectory of the actual and the simulated Bitcoins, I find evidence of a positive effect of the 2024 Bitcoin halving on its price three months later. The magnitude of this effect is one fifth of the total percentage change in the price of Bitcoin during the study period - from April 2, 2023, to July 21, 2024 (17 months). The second part of the study fails to obtain a statistically significant and robust causal estimate of the effect of the 2020 Bitcoin halving on Bitcoin's price. This is the first paper analyzing the effect of halving causally, building on the existing body of correlational research.
Abstract The global financial markets are being changed by DeFi's ability to remove central actors to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions. DeFi promotes efficiency, globalization, and economic inclusion, and at the same time, it has raised tax compliance. This study attempts to bridge the gaps by analyzing available scholarly and policy-oriented research, along with recent regulatory initiatives. The study concludes that the tax compliance challenges posed by DeFi's Decentralization, Shrouded Identity, and Composability Features are serious and can overcome the traditional tax reporting mechanisms. The study also suggests the broad directions of gaps in the literature to be addressed in policy-driven and empirical studies in the future. Keywords: DeFi, Blockchain, Tax Compliance, Fintech
Francisco von Hafe, Yash Wagle, Federico Guede-Fernández, Ana Paula Giordano · 6 authors
Introduction The decentralised nature of blockchain technology challenges traditional legal frameworks, creating regulatory gaps in asset classification, taxation, and consumer protection. In Europe, divergent approaches, from specialised blockchain laws to adaptations of general financial legislation, hinder cross-border deployment and limit blockchain’s potential. These disparities make compliance difficult for firms and increase the risks for consumers. This study compares blockchain regulations across six European geographies: Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Malta (blockchain-specialised regulators) versus the European Union (EU), Estonia, and Portugal (generalist regulators) to map key divergences in legal maturity, asset classification, taxation, anti-money laundering/know-your-customer enforcement, and supervisory structures. A secondary objective is to evaluate how these differences impact the scalability of innovation. Methods This study compares blockchain regulations across six European jurisdictions through a three-phase analysis. The scoping phase identified five regulatory themes and selected geographies based on maturity, innovation, and economic specialisation. Primary legal texts and policy data (2020–2025) were analysed to map convergences and divergences between blockchain-specialised and generalist regulators. Results The comparison reveals differences: blockchain-specialised geographies have dedicated Distributed Ledger Technology laws, centralised oversight, and crypto-friendly tax regimes; for example, Switzerland exempts private capital gains, and Malta offers Value Added Tax exemptions. In contrast, generalist regulators, such as the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which theoretically harmonise rules, face inconsistent enforcement across member states. Meanwhile, Portugal’s tax exemptions and Estonia’s rigid capital requirements create opposing market incentives. Only Liechtenstein’s Blockchain Act comprehensively regulates Decentralised Finance, whereas other geographies either adapt existing financial regulations or do not regulate it. NFTs face fragmented treatment, are excluded under MiCA, classified as securities in Estonia, and left to case-by-case analysis in Switzerland, which contributes to market uncertainty. Discussion This study reveals a tension in blockchain governance: specialised geographies demonstrate that comprehensive, tailored frameworks foster mature ecosystems. Conversely, generalist approaches struggle with fragmentation, as seen in MiCA’s uneven enforcement and Estonia’s restrictive licensing. Yet, regulatory ambiguity carries paradoxical benefits; Portugal’s minimal rules and the EU’s transitional gaps have also fueled competitive innovation. For policymakers, these results underscore the importance of striking a balance between oversight and flexibility to foster and scale up innovation.
This paper investigated this timeless problem of tax evasion with the use of cryptocurrencies in a post-blockchain reality, in terms of legal grey zones and regulatory frameworks in various jurisdictions. Tax evaders have taken advantage of the legal grey areas, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, and privacy-based tools in order to hide their transactions despite the blockchain being transparent. The study used a qualitative multinational comparative research approach in which the authors have used document research and interviews with experts to examine enforcement processes in different jurisdictions including the United States, Canada, Germany, Japan, Australia and Nigeria. Conclusions were that effective statutory frameworks, high technological means of enforcement and stringent penalties were found to impact on the compliance rates positively as can be seen in Germany and Japan. Conversely, in other countries, there were high cases of non-compliance due to weakly disunity of regulation and little technological capacity, e.g., Nigeria and Canada. The introduction of DeFi became another problem since it eliminated centralized intermediaries and made the traditional tax pay reporting system more complicated. Moreover, the paper has highlighted that enforcement tactics should give due attention to enable them to balance between surveillance and privacy safeguards to keep the citizens trusty and willingly follow the law. The solution policy proposals involved integration of legal and legislative frameworks across countries globally, the integration of automated reporting solutions and investment in compliance solutions that preserve privacy. Future study on taxpayer conduct, technological breakthroughs and inter-jurisdictional cooperation to come up with resilient tax governance systems should be a matter of priority. This study added to the argument about an effective and fair establishment as an economy, as well as tax frameworks, goes digital.