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How to improve tax compliance? evidence from population-wide experiments in Belgium

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De Neve, Jan-Emmanuel, Imbert, Clément, Spinnewijn, Johannes, Tsankova, Teodora and Luts, Maarten (2019) How to improve tax compliance? evidence from population-wide experiments in Belgium. Working Paper. Coventry: University of Warwick. Department of Economics. Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS) (1194). (Unpublished)

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Abstract

We study the impact of deterrence, tax morale, and simplifying information on tax compliance. We ran five experiments spanning the tax process which varied the communication of the tax administration with all income taxpayers in Belgium. A consistent picture emerges across experiments: (i) simplifying communication increases compliance, (ii) deterrence messages have an additional positive effect, (iii) invoking tax morale is not effective. Even tax morale messages that improve knowledge and appreciation of public services do not raise compliance. In fact, heterogeneity analysis with causal forests shows that tax morale treatments backfire for most taxpayers. In contrast, simplification has large positive effects on compliance, which diminish over time due to follow-up enforcement. A discontinuity in enforcement intensity, combined with the experimental variation, allows us to compare simplification with standard enforcement measures. Simplification is far more cost-effective, allowing for substantial savings on enforcement costs, and also improves compliance in the next tax cycle.

Item Type: Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper)
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HJ Public Finance
Divisions: Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): Taxpayer compliance -- Belgium, Tax collection -- Belgium
Series Name: Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS)
Publisher: University of Warwick. Department of Economics
Place of Publication: Coventry
ISSN: 0083-7350
Official Date: May 2019
Dates:
DateEvent
May 2019Published
Number: 1194
Number of Pages: 70
Institution: University of Warwick
Status: Not Peer Reviewed
Publication Status: Unpublished
Access rights to Published version: Open Access

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