The Study of Tax Sanctions in Preventing VAT Evasion (The Case Study of Qazvin Province)

Tax revenue is one of the main government resources. But due to tax evasion and its consequences, the realization of the revenue faces great problem and the reduction results in a deficit of the state budget. The spread of tax evasion phenomenon is because of different factors. One of the tools developed by the legislators is tax sanctions for dealing with violators. The purpose of this study is to evaluate tax sanctions in preventing VAT evasion in Qazvin province. At first, by reviewing previous literature and through 120 questionnaires, experts’ and VAT taxpayers’ opinions were identified then by using Fuzzy DEMATEL techniques and views of 10 experts, the possible relationships, the impact of each relationship and the importance of these factors were determined. The Analytical Network Process (ANP) techniques were used for weighing and ranking the factors. The DEMATEL and ANP power vis-a-vis the first generation of causal-effect relationships are in a way that the number of paired comparisons is greatly reduced and obtaining the opinion of experts becomes simple. The Sampling method is simple random. The results show that tax sanctions are affected by other factors affecting tax evasion reduction but they do not affect any of the indexes and its weights i the lowest compared to other indexes.