Nudging for tax compliance: A meta-analysis

Armenak Antinyan and Zareh Asatryan

No 24-054, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: 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 a quarter of taxpayers are compliant. Nudges that commonly refer to elements of tax morale increase compliance by another 1.4 percentage points. Deterrence nudges, which inform taxpayers about enforcement parameters, increase compliance the most, amounting to an additional 3.2 percentage points increase on top of reminders. Our additional findings highlight the conditions where nudges are more effective, such as their potential when targeting sub-population of late-payers, and also suggest that even this sample of randomized trials may be susceptible to selective reporting of results. Overall, our findings imply that taxpayers are biased by various informational and behavioral constraints, and that nudges can be of some help in overcoming these frictions.

Keywords: Tax compliance; Tax evasion; Randomized control trials; Nudging; Reminders; Tax morale; Deterrence; Meta-analysis; Publication selection bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D91 H26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-iue, nep-nud and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Nudging for Tax Compliance: A Meta-Analysis (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:300677

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