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How to improve tax compliance? Evidence from population-wide experiments in Belgium
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Imbert, Clément, De Neve, Jan-Emmanuel, Luts, Maarten, Spinnewijn, Johannes and Tsankova, Teodora (2021) How to improve tax compliance? Evidence from population-wide experiments in Belgium. Journal of Political Economy, 129 (5). pp. 1425-1463. doi:10.1086/713096 ISSN 0022-3808.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/713096
Abstract
We study the impact of simplification, deterrence, and tax morale on tax compliance. We ran four natural field experiments varying the communication of the tax administration with the universe of income taxpayers in Belgium throughout the tax process. A consistent picture emerges across experiments: (i) simplifying communication substantially increases compliance, (ii) deterrence messages have an additional positive effect, (iii) invoking tax morale is not effective and often backfires. A discontinuity in enforcement intensity, combined with the experimental variation, allows us to compare simplification with standard enforcement measures. We find that simplification is far more cost-effective, allowing for substantial savings on enforcement costs.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Political Economy | ||||||||
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0022-3808 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | May 2021 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 129 | ||||||||
| Number: | 5 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 1425-1463 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1086/713096 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | © 2020 by University of Chicago. | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 7 September 2020 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 10 December 2021 | ||||||||
| Is Part Of: | 1 | ||||||||
| Related URLs: |
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