Heard it Through the Grapevine: Direct and Network Effects of a Tax Enforcement Field Experiment

William Boning, John Guyton, Ronald H. Hodge, II, Joel Slemrod and Ugo Troiano

No 24305, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Tax enforcement may affect both the behavior of those directly treated and of some taxpayers not directly treated but linked via a network to those who are treated. A large-scale randomized field experiment enables us to examine both the direct and network effects of letters and in-person visits on withheld income and payroll tax remittances by at-risk firms. Visited firms remit substantially more tax. Their tax preparers’ other clients also remit slightly more tax, while their subsidiaries remit slightly less. Letters have a much smaller direct effect and no network effects, yet may improve compliance at lower cost.

JEL-codes: C93 H26 L14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-exp, nep-iue and nep-pbe
Note: PE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

Published as William C. Boning & John Guyton & Ronald Hodge & Joel Slemrod, 2020. "Heard it through the grapevine: The direct and network effects of a tax enforcement field experiment on firms," Journal of Public Economics, vol 190.

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