The central attraction of value-added tax relative to its alternatives is that it facilitates tax enforcement. By allowing the adjustment of tax paid on inputs, VAT reduces a firm’s incentive and ability to evade. The mechanism makes good sense in theory but remains largely untested...

We examine two Pakistani programs to explore the role of deterrence as well as social and psychological factors in the tax compliance behavior of agents. In the first of these programs, the government began revealing income tax paid by every taxpayer in the country. The second program publicly...