The ability of a tax authority to successfully collect taxes depends critically on both its relationship with the taxpayers and how strongly these taxpayers are committed to contributing to the common good. We present evidence on a new non-intrusive approach aimed at fostering the commitment to...

Tax 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...

What happens when the tax authority increases enforcement in one tax with compliance in other taxes? The very little evidence available is not conclusive. This paper presents a very simple analytical model that shows the conditions under which spillovers could be positive or negative in the...

This study employs a field experiment and qualitative content analysis to examine the effect of various behaviourally-informed messages on increasing tax compliance in Latvia. In a field experiment, more than 3,000 businesses received a message with a normative appeal to increase the relatively...

Tax 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...

Tax compliance nudges are used increasingly by governments because of their perceived cost-effectiveness in raising tax revenue. We collect about a thousand treatment effect estimates from 45 randomized controlled trials, and synthesize this rapidly growing literature using meta-analytical...

We conducted a randomised controlled trial in Indonesia to evaluate the effect of three intervention letters on tax penalty compliance behaviour. Over 10,000 individual taxpayers are randomly assigned to receive either a deterrence, information, or simplification letter, or no letter. Our...

Why do some individuals choose to evade taxes while others do not? One popular view is that some individuals cheat on their taxes because they are more dishonest, selfish, or perceive different social norms. There is, however, little direct evidence on this matter. In collaboration with the...

Governments increasingly use nudges to improve tax collection. We synthesize the growing literature that evaluates nudging experiments using meta-analytical methods. We find that simple reminders increase the probability of compliance by 2.7 percentage points relative to the baseline where about...

This paper is analyzing tax morale in three selected European countries through the evaluation of the results of the European Values Study. The main aim is to identify the factors that influence taxpayers' decisions on the issue of whether they justify cheating on tax or not. The dependence and...