Nudges and Threats: Soft vs Hard Incentives for Tax Compliance

IF 0.4 Q4 ECONOMICS

Ekonomicheskaya politika Pub Date : 2023-03-21 DOI:10.1093/epolic/eiad017

Henrik Andersson, Per Engström, Katarina Nordblom, Susanna Wanander

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

We study what induces delinquent wage earners to pay their taxes due, using high-quality administrative data from the Swedish Tax Agency. We find a strong effect of the standard enforcement regime: a threat of having the debt handed over to the Enforcement Agency increases payments by more than 9 percentage points (from a baseline of 58%). When including actual enforcement, payment increases by 19 percentage points compared to those who do not risk enforcement. In a field experiment, we compare these effects of standard enforcement to those involving much milder nudges, consisting of letters reminding tax delinquents to pay their taxes due. We find that a “pure nudge” (i.e., the inclusion of an extra sheet of paper with no valuable information) has an effect of around 7 percentage points for those who do not risk enforcement upon non-payment, i.e, an effect almost as large as for the threat of enforcement. However, the same nudge has no detectable effect on the group that is subject to enforcement. Finally, we find a small additional effect on payments from social norm messages both for those who risk enforcement and for those who do not.

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风险与威胁：税收合规的软激励与硬激励

我们利用瑞典税务局的高质量行政数据，研究了是什么促使拖欠工资的工薪阶层缴纳到期税款。我们发现标准执行制度的强大影响：将债务移交给执行机构的威胁使付款增加了9个百分点以上（从58%的基线）。如果包括实际执行，与不冒执行风险的人相比，支付额增加了19个百分点。在一项实地实验中，我们将标准执行的这些效果与那些涉及温和得多的轻推的效果进行了比较，这些轻推包括提醒税务违法者缴纳到期税款的信件。我们发现，“纯粹的推动”（即增加一张没有价值信息的纸）对那些在未付款时不冒强制执行风险的人的影响约为7个百分点，也就是说，这种影响几乎与强制执行的威胁一样大。然而，同样的轻推对被强制执行的群体没有可检测的影响。最后，我们发现社会规范信息对支付的额外影响很小，无论是对那些冒着强制执行风险的人还是对那些不冒风险的人。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Ekonomicheskaya politika ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

1.30

自引率

20.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Ekonomicheskaya Politika is a broad-range economic journal devoted primarily to the study of the economic policy of present-day Russia as well as global economic problems. The subject matters of articles includes macroeconomic, fiscal, monetary, industrial, social, regulation and competition policyand more. The journal also publishes theoretical papers in such areas as political economy, general economic theory, welfare economics, law and economics,and institutional economics.. The character and the scope of economic problems studied in many publications require a multidisciplinary approach, consistent with the editorial policy of the journal. While the thematic scope of articles is generally related to Russia, the aim of editorial policy is to cover politico-economic processes in the modern world and international economic relations, as well. In addition, Ekonomicheskaya Politika publishes Russian translations of classical and significant modern works of foreign economists.