This paper reports on the results of a controlled experiment in Minnesota in which a random sample of taxpayers was informed that their income tax returns would certainly be closely examined. We analyze reported income of this sample of taxpayers, reported income on their previous year's...

This report describes the Minnesota Income Tax Compliance Experiment conducted by the Minnesota Department of Revenue in 1995. The experiment tested alternate strategies to improve voluntary compliance with the state income tax. These strategies included: increased examination and auditing of...

Some academics and politicians have proposed that taxpayers should be reimbursed for costs of randomly imposed tax audits, because, they argue, randomly imposing audit costs is unfair. But none of those proposing audit compensation has explained why randomly imposed audit costs are unfair, or...