Optimal tax administration

This paper sets out a framework for analyzing optimal interventions by a tax administration, one that parallels and can be closely integrated with established frameworks for thinking about optimal tax policy. Its key contribution is the development of a summary measure of the impact of administrative interventions the "enforcement elasticity of tax revenue" that is a sufficient statistic for the behavioral response to such interventions, much as the elasticity of taxable income serves as a sufficient statistic for the response to tax rates. Among the applications are characterizations of the optimal balance between policy and administrative measures, and of the optimal compliance gap. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V.