Enforcement Spillovers

Rincke, Johannes; Traxler, Christian

doi:10.1162/rest_a_00128

“…Therefore, we cannot rule out that the increase in compliance in the control group was affected by enforcement spillovers. Rincke and Traxler (2011) find sizable spillover effects of actual enforcement-one additional household compliance for every three additional units of enforcement. 35 We could not check either whether the treatments affected the acceptance of the moratorium because of the way the Municipality collected the data.…”

mentioning

confidence: 89%

Tax compliance and enforcement in the pampas evidence from a field experiment

Castro

¹

,

Scartascini

²

2015

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Inter-American Development Bank, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent. Terms of use: Documents inThe unauthorized commercial use of Bank documents is prohibited and may be punishable under the Bank's policies and/or applicable laws.Copyright © Inter-American Development Bank. This working paper may be reproduced for any non-commercial purpose. It may also be reproduced in any academic journal indexed by the American Economic Association's EconLit, with previous consent by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), provided that the IDB is credited and that the author(s) receive no income from the publication. Cataloging-in-Publication AbstractTax evasion is a pervasive problem in many countries. In particular, some developing countries do not collect even half of what they would if taxpayers complied with the written letter of the law. The academic literature has not been oblivious to the need to explain why people pay (or do not pay) taxes. However, the empirical literature has not yet reached consensus. This paper reports the results of a large field experiment that tried to affect compliance by influencing property tax taxpayers' beliefs regarding the levels of enforcement, equity, and fairness of the tax system in a municipality in Argentina. Results indicate that the most effective message was one that stated the actual fines and potential legal consequences taxpayers may face in the case of noncompliance (tax compliance increased by more than 4 percentage points). No average effects are found for the treatments designed to affect beliefs about the equity and fairness of the system. However, the evidence also points out that not every taxpayer updates his or her beliefs in the same direction, as relevant heterogeneous effects are found across the population. The evidence in this paper advances the state of knowledge and may help to reconcile some of the different results in the literature. JEL classifications: H26, C93, D03, H41

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“…Households have an incentive to evade because public broadcasting programs can be received without paying fees. Rincke and Traxler (2011) demonstrate that households trade off the gains from evasion against the costs of detection. Beyond this similarity to tax evasion, the institutional framework is attractive as it offers a good measure of evasion: 99 percent of all Austrian households own a radio or TV (ORF Medienforschung, 2006), which makes them liable to register for license fees, according to federal law.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Higher taxes, more evasion? Evidence from border differentials in TV license fees

Berger

¹

,

Fellner-Röhling

²

,

Sausgruber

³

et al. 2016

Journal of Public Economics

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Die Dis cus si on Pape rs die nen einer mög lichst schnel len Ver brei tung von neue ren For schungs arbei ten des ZEW. Die Bei trä ge lie gen in allei ni ger Ver ant wor tung der Auto ren und stel len nicht not wen di ger wei se die Mei nung des ZEW dar.Dis cus si on Papers are inten ded to make results of ZEW research prompt ly avai la ble to other eco no mists in order to encou ra ge dis cus si on and sug gesti ons for revi si ons. The aut hors are sole ly respon si ble for the con tents which do not neces sa ri ly repre sent the opi ni on of the ZEW.Higher taxes, more evasion?Evidence from border differentials in TV license fees * JEL-Classification: H26; H27 Melissa Berger

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“…In particular, our results suggest the existence of evasion spillovers among taxpayers, with individuals becoming more likely to start cheating when being exposed to a more non-compliant environment. While there exist empirical documentations of indirect deterrent effects of increased enforcement on the compliance of non-audited taxpayers (see Rincke andTraxler 2011, Pomeranz 2013), evidence of complementary evasion spillovers among taxpayers regarding easy opportunities to cheat is extremely scarce. Only Fortin, Lacroix and Villeval (2007) and Alm, Jackson and McKee (2009) touch on this issue, presenting lab evidence that taxpayers' reporting is sensitive to the evasion decision taken by other taxpayers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taking the high road? Compliance with commuter tax allowances and the role of evasion spillovers

Paetzold

¹

,

Winner

²

2016

Journal of Public Economics

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractWe provide first field evidence on evasion spillovers as an important determinant of the individual compliance decision. Exploiting discontinuities in a self-reported commuter tax allowance, we observe a substantial share of taxpayers misreporting their claims. Using exogenous variation in job changes we find that individual evasion decisions are influenced by the compliance behavior of other co-workers, with job changers from low-to high-cheating companies starting to evade much more after they move. In contrast, movers from high-to low-cheating companies do not alter their reporting. The most likely explanation is information transmission, including increased knowledge about the possibilities for non-compliance.

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Enforcement Spillovers

Cited by 112 publications

References 34 publications

Tax compliance and enforcement in the pampas evidence from a field experiment

Tax compliance and enforcement in the pampas evidence from a field experiment

Higher taxes, more evasion? Evidence from border differentials in TV license fees

Taking the high road? Compliance with commuter tax allowances and the role of evasion spillovers

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