image

Economic Mechanisms for Preventing Tax Evasion and Financial Crimes: Cross-Country Evidence

Download Paper: Download pdf
Author(s):
  • Dmytro TYCHYNA Research Laboratory on the Problems of Combating Crime of the Educational and Research, National Academy of Internal Affairs, Kyiv, Ukraine
  • Nataliia TOPCHII Department of Administrative and Criminal Law, Oles Honchar Dnipro National University, Dnipro, Ukraine
  • Yuliia MOROZ Department of Private Law, State Tax University, Irpin, Ukraine
  • Myroslava PASEKA Department of Social, Humanitarian and Legal Disciplines, Faculty of Management, Uman National University, Uman, Ukraine
  • Oleksii MATSAK Interregional Academy of Personnel Management, Kyiv, Ukraine
Abstract:

This study explores the development and implementation of economic mechanisms designed to prevent financial crimes within the tax system, specifically focusing on the challenges faced by Ukraine as a transitional economy. Financial sustainability in emerging markets is fundamentally tied to the integrity of tax administration; systemic tax evasion and financial crimes create fiscal deficits that undermine structural reforms. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, this paper analyses the effectiveness of current preventive measures against international benchmarks established by the OECD and the European Union.

The research identifies critical structural vulnerabilities in the current tax system and proposes a modernized framework of "Economic Mechanisms" that includes digital transparency, risk-based auditing, and international information exchange protocols. The findings suggest that transitioning from reactive legal enforcement to proactive economic prevention significantly reduces the "tax gap" and enhances the state's fiscal resilience, safeguarding tax revenues, these mechanisms provide the necessary financial stability to support broader structural reforms and long-term economic growth. The study offers practical recommendations for policymakers to align national tax enforcement with global standards, ensuring corporate and state financial sustainability in volatile transitional environments.


Copyright© 2026 The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the license CC-BY 4.0., which permits any further distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


Article’s history: Received 17th of November, 2025; Revised 19th of December, 2025; Accepted 10th of January, 2026; Available online: 15th of March, 2026. Published as article in the Volume XXI, Special Issue 1(91), 2026.



How to cite:

Tychyna, D., Topchii, N., Moroz, Y., Paseka, M., & Matsak, O. (2025). Economic Mechanisms for Preventing Tax Evasion and Financial Crimes:  Cross-Country Evidence. Journal of Applied Economic Sciences, Volume XXI, Special Issue, 1(91), 99 – 114. https://doi.org/10.57017/jaes.v21.si.1(91).05


Declaration of Conflict Interest: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.


Acknowledgments/Funding: N/A.


Data Availability Statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.


Ethical Approval Statement: Ethical approval was waived due to the use of secondary data sources and the retrospective nature of the study. All data used were either publicly available or derived using custom text-mining scripts, and no human participants were involved.



References:

Advani, A., Elming, W., & Shaw, J. (2023). The dynamic effects of tax audits. Review of Economics and Statistics, 105(3), 545-561. https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01101


Ahmad, B., Ciupac-Ulici, M., & Beju, D. G. (2021). Economic and non-economic variables affecting fraud in European countries. Risks, 9(6), 119. https://doi.org/10.3390/risks9060119


Bak, N., Kalyta, T., Tarashchenko, V., & Artemchuk, M. (2024). The impact of the shadow economy on the reduction of tax revenues to the state budget. Financial and Credit Activity Problems of Theory and Practice, 2(55), 130–143. https://doi.org/10.55643/fcaptp.2.55.2024.4330 


Belnap, A., Hoopes, J. L., Maydew, E. L., & Turk, A. (2024). Real effects of tax audits. Review of Accounting Studies, 29(1), 665-700. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11142-022-09717-w


Blaufus, K., Reineke, J., Trenn, I. (2023). Perceived tax audit aggressiveness, tax control frameworks and tax planning: an empirical analysis. Journal of Business Economics, 93(3), 509-557. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11573-022-01116-6 


Buszko, A., & Skorwider-Namiotko, J. (2021). Impact of shadow economy and corruption on tax efficiency. Journal of Management and Financial Sciences, 42, 9-24. https://doi.org/10.33119/JMFS.2021.42.1


Challoumis, C., & Constantinou, A. (2024). Combating tax avoidance: EU and Greek measures for fair corporate taxation. Baltic Journal of Legal and Social Sciences, 3, 13-21. https://doi.org/10.30525/2592-8813-2024-3-2


Ciucci, S. (2024). Tax evasion, education and shadow economy. Economic Change and Restructuring, 57(4), 150. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10644-024-09732-8


Freytag, A., Schneider, F., & Spiegel, S. E. (2022). The influence of economic freedom on the shadow economy in developed and developing countries. The Economists’ Voice, 19(2), 205-227. https://doi.org/10.1515/ev-2022-0008


Gechert, S., & Heimberger, Ph. (2022). Do corporate tax cuts boost economic growth? European Economic Review, 147, 104157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2022.104157


Hebous, Sh., Jia, Zh., Løyland, K., Thoresen, Th., & Øvrum, A. (2023). Do audits improve future tax compliance in the absence of penalties? Evidence from random audits in Norway. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 207, 305-326. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.01.001


Heritage Foundation. (2024). Index of economic freedom 2024. https://www.heritage.org/index/pages/all-country-scores


Irawan, D. (2022). Restorative justice aspect in strengthening preliminary evidence audit in Indonesian taxation. Journal of Tax Law and Policy, 1(2), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.56282/jtlp.v1i2.78


Irawan, F., & Utama, A. S. (2021). The impact of tax audit and corruption perception on tax evasion. International Journal of Business and Society, 22(3), 1158-1173. https://doi.org/10.33736/ijbs.4290.2021


Kasper, M., & Alm, J. (2022). Audits, audit effectiveness, and post-audit tax compliance. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 195, 87-102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2022.01.003


Lampenius, N., Shevlin, T., & Stenzel, A. (2021). Measuring corporate tax rate and tax base avoidance of US Domestic and US multinational firms. Journal of Accounting and Economics, 72(1), 101406. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacceco.2021.101406


Melnyk, D. S., Parfylo, O., Butenko, O., Tykhonova, O., & Zarosylo, V. (2022). Practice of the member states of the European Union in the field of anti-corruption regulation. Journal of Financial Crime, 29(3), 853-863. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFC-03-2021-0050 


Němec, D., Kotlánová, E., Kotlán, I., & Machová, Z. (2021). Corruption, taxation and the impact on the shadow economy. Economies, 9(1), 18. https://doi.org/10.3390/economies9010018


Neog, Y., & Gaur, A. K. (2021). Shadow economy, corruption, and tax performance: A study of BRICS. Journal of Public Affairs, 21(2), e2174. https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2174


OECD. (2024). Tax administration 2024: Comparative information on OECD and other advanced and emerging economies. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/tax-administration-2024_2d5fba9c-en.html


Popadynets, N., Yakymchuk, O., Yakymchuk, A., Bilyk,R., Irtyshcheva, I., Hryhoruk, I., Blishchuk, K., Boiko, Y., Hryshyna, N., Sirenko, I., Yakymchuk, Y., & Serhiychuk, S. (2021). Increasing competitiveness of economic regions: Prospects for innovative development. In Russo, D., Ahram, T., Karwowski, W., Di Bucchianico, G., Taiar, R. (eds), Intelligent human systems integration 2021. Advances in intelligent systems and computing, Volume 1322, 496–502. Springer, Cham. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68017-6_74 


Popescu, L. (2021). Tax offenses. Scientific Bulletin Economic Sciences, Special Issue, Volume 20, 71-76. http://economic.upit.ro/RePEc/pdf/2021_3_8.pdf


Remeikienė, R., Gasparėnienė, L., Bayar, Y., Ginevičius, R., & Ragaišytė, I. M. (2022). ICT development and shadow economy: Empirical evidence from the EU transition economies. Economic Research - Ekonomska Istraživanja, 35(1), 762-777. https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2021.1932545


Saleem, S., Shair, W., Hassan, R., & Iftikhar, R. (2024). Effect of ICT and e-government on public revenue: Evidence from South Asian economies. Bulletin of Business and Economics (BBE), 13(1), 398-408. https://doi.org/10.61506/01.00221


Semenets-Orlova, I., Shevchuk, R., Plish, B., Moshnin, A., Chmyr, Y., & Poliuliakh, R. (2022). Human-centered approach in new development tendencies of value-oriented public administration: Potential of education. Economic Affairs (New Delhi), 67(5), 899-906. https://doi.org/10.46852/0424-2513.5.2022.25 


Siglé, M. A., Goslinga, S. Speklé, R., & van der Hel, L. (2022). The cooperative approach to corporate tax compliance: An empirical assessment. Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, 46, 100447. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intaccaudtax.2022.100447


Stratmann, Th. (2024). A reservation economic freedom index. Public Choice, 199(3), 213-231. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-023-01088-3


Tax Justice Network. (2024a). The state of tax justice 2024. https://taxjustice.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/State-of-Tax-Justice-2024-English-Tax-Justice-Network.pdf


Tax Justice Network. (2024b). The world’s biggest enablers of corporate tax abuse. https://cthi.taxjustice.net/full-list


Tiutiunyk, І., Mazurenko, О., Spodin, S., Volynets, R., & Hladkovskyi, M. (2022). The nexus between international tax competitiveness and the shadow economy: A cross-countries analysis. Financial and Credit Activity Problems of Theory and Practice, 1(42), 196-205. https://doi.org/10.55643/fcaptp.1.42.2022.3703


Transparency International. (2021). Corruption Perceptions Index 2021. https://images.transparencycdn.org/images/CPI2021_Report_EN-web.pdf


Turksen, U., & Abukari, A. (2021). OECD’s global principles and EU’s tax crime measures. Journal of Financial Crime, 28(2), 406-419. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JFC-09-2019-0118


Turksen, U., Abukari, A., Rasmouki, F., Kreissl, R., Bourton, S., Luecke, H., Lui, A., Mahuta, H., Öner, S., Grasso, C., MacLennan, S., & Pasculli, L. (2023). Tax crimes and illicit money flows in the EUs: Comparison and key findings. In: Turksen, U., Vozza, D., Kreissl, R. And Rasmouki, F. (eds.), Tax crimes and enforcement in the European Union: Solutions for law, oolicy and practice (pp. 14-66). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192862341.003.0002


World Economics. (2024). Informal economy sizes. https://www.worldeconomics.com/Informal-Economy/


Zwick, E. (2021). The costs of corporate tax complexity. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 13(2), 467-500. https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20180406