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The $100 Million Nudge: Increasing Tax Compliance of Businesses and the Self-Employed using a Natural Field Experiment

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  • Justin E. Holz
  • John A. List
  • Alejandro Zentner
  • Marvin Cardoza
  • Joaquin Zentner

Abstract

This paper uses a natural field experiment to examine the effectiveness of specific nudges on tax compliance amongst firms and the self-employed in the Dominican Republic. In collaboration with the Dominican Republic’s tax authority, we designed messages for more than 28,000 self-employed workers and over 56,000 firms. Leveraging administrative tax data, we find evidence that our nudges (increasing the salience of prison sentences or public disclosure of tax evaders) have large effects on increasing tax compliance, primarily working through the channel of decreasing claimed tax exemptions. Interestingly, we find that firms are more impacted than the self-employed, and that firm size is critically linked to nudge effectiveness: larger firms are considerably more influenced by nudges than smaller firms. We find this latter result noteworthy given the paucity of evidence showing significant behavioral impacts of nudges amongst the largest players in a market. Overall, our messages increased tax revenue by $193 million (roughly 0.23% of the Dominican Republic’s GDP in 2018), with over $100 million constituting income that the government would not have received without our field experimental nudges.

Suggested Citation

  • Justin E. Holz & John A. List & Alejandro Zentner & Marvin Cardoza & Joaquin Zentner, 2020. "The $100 Million Nudge: Increasing Tax Compliance of Businesses and the Self-Employed using a Natural Field Experiment," NBER Working Papers 27666, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27666
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    Cited by:

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    3. Brad C. Nathan & Ricardo Perez-Truglia & Alejandro Zentner, 2020. "My Taxes are Too Darn High: Why Do Households Protest their Taxes?," NBER Working Papers 27816, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Holz, Justin E. & List, John A. & Zentner, Alejandro & Cardoza, Marvin & Zentner, Joaquin E., 2023. "The $100 million nudge: Increasing tax compliance of firms using a natural field experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    5. Ani Qi & Zeyu Ji & Yuanchao Gong & Bo Yang & Yan Sun, 2022. "The Impact of the Gain-Loss Frame on College Students’ Willingness to Participate in the Individual Low-Carbon Behavior Rewarding System (ILBRS): The Mediating Role of Environmental Risk Perception," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(17), pages 1-12, September.
    6. C. Yiwei Zhang & Jeffrey Hemmeter & Judd B. Kessler & Robert D. Metcalfe & Robert Weathers, 2023. "Nudging Timely Wage Reporting: Field Experimental Evidence from the U.S. Supplemental Security Income Program," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(3), pages 1341-1353, March.
    7. Martin Brown & Jan Schmitz & Christian Zehnder, 2023. "Moral Constraints, Social Norm Enforcement and Strategic Default in Weak and Strong Economic Conditions," Working Papers 23.03, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.
    8. Eric Floyd & Michael Hallsworth & John List & Robert Metcalfe & Kristian Rotaru & Ivo Vlaev, 2022. "What motivates people to pay their taxes? Evidence from four experiments on tax compliance," Natural Field Experiments 00750, The Field Experiments Website.
    9. Xiangyu Wang & Min Zhang & Weiguo Fan & Kang Zhao, 2022. "Understanding the spread of COVID‐19 misinformation on social media: The effects of topics and a political leader's nudge," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(5), pages 726-737, May.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance

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