by Diane Ring
It is no surprise to those working in the tax field, whether in government, private practice, academia or the nonprofit sector, that not all taxpayer mistakes are innocent. Some taxpayers affirmatively engage in fraud, and sometimes that fraud is wrapped up with corruption. The high profile spate of tax leaks beginning in 2008 helped put a more public face on many aspects of an old problem.
As part of an effort to better respond to tax crimes and corruption, the EU has funded an interdisciplinary and comparative research legal research project — VIRTEU [Vat fraud: Interdisciplinary Research on Tax crimes in the European Union]. This project is aimed at exploring connections between tax fraud and corruption. Focused in part on VAT fraud, the relevant issues and the kinds of questions that must be asked are universal across the tax system.
VIRTEU, for which I am a special advisor, is hosting a Roundtable Discussion Series this spring that brings together experts from academic institutions, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector to engage in topical discussions around the general problem of tax fraud and corruption. Along with the the VIRTEU project’s Principal Investigator Dr. Costantino Grasso and Co-Investigator Dr. Lorenzo Pasculli, I will be organizing and hosting the series, which is also sponsored by Boston College Law School, Coventry University Research Centre on Financial and Corporate Integrity, and OLAF (the European Anti-Fraud Office).
The first session, “Exploring the interconnections between tax crimes and corruptions“, will be held via Zoom on Friday January 29, 2021 (at 11:00am EST/ 4:00pm GMT). Here is the registration link. See below for more details – and join us for what promises to be an invigorating discussion of the connections between the legal and policy frameworks for corruption and for tax crimes.
The Surly Subgroup 
As I mentioned during that session, I think the lens of accounting’s “fraud triangle” (which has its origins in the study of white-collar crime) can greatly inform these connections. I explore the fraud triangle and apply it to tax cheating in my forthcoming article, The Fraud Triangle and Tax Evasion, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3339558.
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