IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/21904.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reminders & Recidivism: Evidence from Tax Filing & EITC Participation among Low-Income Nonfilers

Author

Listed:
  • John Guyton
  • Dayanand S. Manoli
  • Brenda Schafer
  • Michael Sebastiani

Abstract

This project examines how reminders affect tax filing among lower-income nonfilers (individuals who did not appear on a filed tax return but had income reported by third parties to the Internal Revenue Service). We present novel data on this population and results from two randomized controlled trials. The results demonstrate that one-time reminders increase tax filing, both to claim tax refunds based in part on withholdings and Earned Income Tax Credit benefits, as well as to voluntarily pay balances owed to the IRS. However, these effects do not persist. Consistent with recency effects, individuals who owe a balance due appear more likely to recidivate into nonfiling than those who receive refunds. Follow-up reminders continue to increase tax filing, particularly among individuals who previously had to pay balances to the IRS instead of receive refunds.

Suggested Citation

  • John Guyton & Dayanand S. Manoli & Brenda Schafer & Michael Sebastiani, 2016. "Reminders & Recidivism: Evidence from Tax Filing & EITC Participation among Low-Income Nonfilers," NBER Working Papers 21904, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21904
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21904.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Congdon, William J. & Kling, Jeffrey R. & Mullainathan, Sendhil, 2009. "Behavioral Economics and Tax Policy," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 62(3), pages 375-386, September.
    2. Scholz, John Karl, 1994. "The Earned Income Credit: Participation, Compliance, and Antipoverty Effectiveness," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 47(1), pages 63-87, March.
    3. Raj Chetty & Adam Looney & Kory Kroft, 2009. "Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1145-1177, September.
    4. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Wojciech Kopczuk, 2011. "Transfer Program Complexity and the Take-Up of Social Benefits," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 54-90, February.
    5. Castleman, Benjamin L. & Page, Lindsay C., 2015. "Summer nudging: Can personalized text messages and peer mentor outreach increase college going among low-income high school graduates?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 144-160.
    6. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    7. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Claus Thustrup Kreiner & Emmanuel Saez, 2016. "Why Can Modern Governments Tax So Much? An Agency Model of Firms as Fiscal Intermediaries," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(330), pages 219-246, April.
    8. Justine S. Hastings & Jeffrey M. Weinstein, 2008. "Information, School Choice, and Academic Achievement: Evidence from Two Experiments," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(4), pages 1373-1414.
    9. Sendhil Mullainathan & Joshua Schwartzstein & William J. Congdon, 2012. "A Reduced-Form Approach to Behavioral Public Finance," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 511-540, July.
    10. Remler, D.K. & Glied, S.A., 2003. "What other programs can teach us: Increasing participation in health insurance programs," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 93(1), pages 67-74.
    11. Joel Slemrod, 2007. "Cheating Ourselves: The Economics of Tax Evasion," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(1), pages 25-48, Winter.
    12. Peter Bergman, 2021. "Parent-Child Information Frictions and Human Capital Investment: Evidence from a Field Experiment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(1), pages 286-322.
    13. Saurabh Bhargava & Dayanand Manoli, 2015. "Psychological Frictions and the Incomplete Take-Up of Social Benefits: Evidence from an IRS Field Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(11), pages 3489-3529, November.
    14. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan & Eldar Shafir, 2004. "A Behavioral-Economics View of Poverty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 419-423, May.
    15. Raj Chetty, 2015. "Behavioral Economics and Public Policy: A Pragmatic Perspective," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 1-33, May.
    16. Julia R G Raifman & Heather E Lanthorn & Slawa Rokicki & Günther Fink, 2014. "The Impact of Text Message Reminders on Adherence to Antimalarial Treatment in Northern Ghana: A Randomized Trial," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(10), pages 1-10, October.
    17. Maurer, J. & Harris, K.M., 2014. "Issuance of patient reminders for influenza vaccination by us-based primary care physicians during the first year of universal influenzavaccination recommendations," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 104(6), pages 60-62.
    18. Scholz, John Karl, 1994. "The Earned Income Credit: Participation, Compliance, and Antipoverty Effectiveness," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 47(1), pages 63-87, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dina Pomeranz & José Vila-Belda, 2019. "Taking State-Capacity Research to the Field: Insights from Collaborations with Tax Authorities," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 755-781, August.
    2. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve & Clément Imbert & Johannes Spinnewijn & Teodora Tsankova & Maarten Luts, 2021. "How to Improve Tax Compliance? Evidence from Population-Wide Experiments in Belgium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(5), pages 1425-1463.
    3. Hargaden, Enda Patrick, 2020. "Taxpayer responses in good times and bad," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 653-690.
    4. Bastani, Spencer & Giebe, Thomas & Miao, Chizheng, 2020. "Ethnicity and tax filing behavior," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    5. David Neumark & Katherine E. Williams, 2020. "Do State Earned Income Tax Credits Increase Participation in the Federal EITC?," NBER Working Papers 27626, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Jonathan Meer & Joshua Witter, 2022. "Effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit for Childless Adults: A Regression Discontinuity Approach," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 37, pages 175-198, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Hoynes, Hilary & Rothstein, Jesse, 2016. "Tax Policy Toward Low-Income Families," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt87d6v10j, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    8. Luis Ayala & Milagros Paniagua, 2019. "The impact of tax benefits on female labor supply and income distribution in Spain," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 1025-1048, September.
    9. Laura L. Leets & Amber Sprenger & Robert O. Hartman & Nicholas W. Kohn & Juli Simon Thomas & Chrissy T. Vu & Sandi Aguirre & Sanith Wijesinghe, 2020. "Effectiveness of nudges on small business tax compliance behavior," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 3(2).
    10. Meiselman, Ben S., 2018. "Ghostbusting in Detroit: Evidence on nonfilers from a controlled field experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 180-193.
    11. David Neumark & Katherine E. Williams, 2020. "Do State Earned Income Tax Credits Increase Participation in the Federal EITC?," Public Finance Review, , vol. 48(5), pages 579-626, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andreas R. Kostøl & Andreas S. Myhre, 2021. "Labor Supply Responses to Learning the Tax and Benefit Schedule," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(11), pages 3733-3766, November.
    2. Bergman, Peter & Denning, Jeffrey T. & Manoli, Dayanand, 2017. "Broken Tax Breaks? Evidence from a Tax Credit Information Experiment with 1,000,000 Students," IZA Discussion Papers 10997, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Kalena E. Cortes & Hans Fricke & Susanna Loeb & David S. Song, 2018. "Too little or too much? Actionable Advice in an Early-Childhood Text Messaging Experiment," NBER Working Papers 24827, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Raj Chetty, 2015. "Behavioral Economics and Public Policy: A Pragmatic Perspective," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 1-33, May.
    5. Dmitry Taubinsky & Alex Rees-Jones, 2018. "Attention Variation and Welfare: Theory and Evidence from a Tax Salience Experiment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(4), pages 2462-2496.
    6. Cortes, Kalena E. & Fricke, Hans & Loeb, Susanna & Song, David S. & York, Ben, 2019. "When Behavioral Barriers Are Too High or Low: How Timing Matters for Parenting Interventions," IZA Discussion Papers 12416, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Julie Janssens & Natascha Van Mechelen, 2017. "Who is to Blame? An Overview of the Factors Contributing to the Non-Take-Up of Social Rights," Working Papers 1708, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    8. Adam M. Lavecchia & Heidi Liu & Philip Oreopoulos, 2014. "Behavioral Economics of Education: Progress and Possibilities," NBER Working Papers 20609, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Wojciech Kopczuk, 2011. "Transfer Program Complexity and the Take-Up of Social Benefits," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 54-90, February.
    10. Essl, Andrea & Steffen, Angela & Staehle, Martin, 2021. "Choose to reuse! The effect of action-close reminders on pro-environmental behavior," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    11. Christopher J. Doss & Erin M. Fahle & Susanna Loeb & Benjamin N. York, 2018. "More than Just a Nudge: Supporting Kindergarten Parents with Differentiated and Personalized Text-Messages," NBER Working Papers 24450, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Castleman, Benjamin L. & Patterson, Richard & Skimmyhorn, William, 2020. "Benefits left on the table: Evidence from the Servicemembers’ Civil Relief Act," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    13. Waldenstrom, Daniel & Bastani, Spencer, 2020. "The Ability Gradient in Bunching," CEPR Discussion Papers 14599, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve & Clément Imbert & Johannes Spinnewijn & Teodora Tsankova & Maarten Luts, 2021. "How to Improve Tax Compliance? Evidence from Population-Wide Experiments in Belgium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(5), pages 1425-1463.
    15. Dina Pomeranz & José Vila-Belda, 2019. "Taking State-Capacity Research to the Field: Insights from Collaborations with Tax Authorities," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 755-781, August.
    16. Keys, Benjamin J. & Pope, Devin G. & Pope, Jaren C., 2016. "Failure to refinance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 482-499.
    17. Ha Trong Nguyen & Huong Thu Le & Luke B Connelly, 2021. "Who's declining the “free lunch”? New evidence from the uptake of public child dental benefits," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(2), pages 270-288, February.
    18. Lu, Kelin, 2022. "Overreaction to capital taxation in saving decisions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    19. Bleemer, Zachary & Zafar, Basit, 2018. "Intended college attendance: Evidence from an experiment on college returns and costs," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 184-211.
    20. Helen G. Levy & Edward C. Norton & Jeffrey A. Smith, 2018. "Tobacco Regulation and Cost-Benefit Analysis: How Should We Value Foregone Consumer Surplus?," American Journal of Health Economics, MIT Press, vol. 4(1), pages 1-25, Winter.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21904. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.