Games and Network Structures on Corruption, Income Inequality, and Tax Control

We study taxpayers’ decisions according to their personal income, individual preferences with respect to the audit and tax control information perceived in their social environment. We consider that citizens are classified by two social groups, the rich and the poor. When public authorities are corrupt, we show that the poor group is the most affected by corruption. However, when taxpayers are corrupt or tax evaders, we implement mechanisms to audit and control this corrupt behaviour. We show that this situation can be represented by several well-known theoretical games. Then, evolutionary dynamics of the game in networks considering that each taxpayer receives information from his neighbours about the probability of audit is analyzed. Our simulation analysis shows that the initial and final preferences of taxpayers depend on important parameters, i.e. taxes and fines, audit information and costs.