You’ve got mail: A randomised Field experiment on tax evasion

Kristina Maria Bott (), Alexander Cappelen, Erik Sørensen and Bertil Tungodden
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Kristina Maria Bott: Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Postal: NHH , Department of Economics, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway

No 10/2017, Discussion Paper Series in Economics from Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics

Abstract: We report from a large-scale randomized field experiment conducted on a unique sample of more than 15 000 taxpayers in Norway, who were likely to have misreported their foreign income. We find that the inclusion of a moral appeal or a sentence that increases the perceived probability of detection in a letter from the tax authorities almost doubled the average self-reported foreign income. The moral letter mainly works on the intensive margin, while the detection letter mainly works on the extensive margin. We also show that the detection letter has large long-term effects on tax compliance.

Keywords: Taxation; tax evasion; field Experiment. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D63 H26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2017-06-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-eur, nep-exp, nep-iue, nep-pbe and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Working Paper: You've Got Mail: A Randomised Field Experiment on Tax Evasion (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2017_010

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