Abstract: Through simulation experiment, this paper distinguishes and compares the effect of tax compliance between high-income groups and middle or lower-income groups under different tax enforcement strategies. The empirical analysis shows that, among the various tax law enforcement factors which affect taxpayers’ compliance decision, the seized probability for high-income individuals takes on the most significant deterence, the penalty rate and incentives also have positive correlations with it, though the influence of penalty rate is not significant. Among the combined strategies of tax law enforcement, to implement the combination of deterrence and motivation has the effect generally superior to all other combinations on the compliance of the taxpayers. Therefore, in order to maximize the degree of tax compliance of the high-income individuals, the tax authority should exert great efforts to adjust and optimize the current tax law enforcement strategies and construct the optimal enforcement combinations of deterrence and incentive on the basis of improving the seized probability of tax non-compliance for high-income individuals.

Key words: deterrent mechanism; complying incentives; degree of tax compliance; high-income individuals; optimal tax law enforcement