EU Countries Tax Evasion Clustering

Abstract

The problem of tax evasion is becoming more and more prominent, and it is causing large losses in individual state budgets. However, European policies have taken significant steps to eliminate them over the last two decades. National policies also contribute to reducing the estimated extent of tax evasion, as measured by Schneider's MIMIC model. However, these tendencies are not the same in individual countries. Therefore, in our paper, we try to find pattern in tax evasion time trajectories of European Union countries and thus to create homogenous clusters that include countries with similar tax evasion situation. To meet our goal, we use panel data clustering method on our data with information about tax evasion of EU countries from 2000 to 2019. As a next step, we compare created cluster from the perspective of quality indicators of public institutions.