Case Study: Estonian Tax and Customs Board achieves 80–90% fraud detection and faster, more efficient audits with SAS Enterprise Guide (SAS)

Estonian Tax and Customs Board uses SAS to detect and prevent tax fraud

The Estonian Tax and Customs Board, responsible for collecting state taxes and enforcing customs rules, needed a cost-effective way to detect and prevent sophisticated tax fraud (notably false VAT rebate claims and hidden “underground” salaries) without burdening law‑abiding taxpayers. Existing tools (Excel and Access) were slow, inflexible and error‑prone, so the agency needed faster, more accurate targeting and the ability to adapt quickly as fraud schemes evolved.

By adopting SAS Enterprise Guide and accessing live Oracle data, analysts can build dynamic risk models, change features instantly and evaluate far larger volumes of filings. As a result, the board now targets audits far more precisely—about 80–90% of audited filings show fraud or errors (versus only ~20–30% before)—can analyze roughly five times more data, save significant time, and respond quickly to new risk types.

Estonian Tax and Customs Board

Egon Veermäe

Deputy Director General of Core Processes