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The Minnesota Income Tax Compliance Experiment: Replication of the Social Norms Experiment

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  • Coleman, Stephen

Abstract

This research note reports the results of a follow-up experiment conducted to validate an earlier experiment showing that if taxpayers overestimate the prevalence of tax evasion, their voluntary compliance can be increased by informing them about the true rate of cheating. The result confirms that tax compliance is influenced partly by social conformity with perceived social norms against cheating. The experiments were done by the Minnesota Department of Revenue in 1995 and 1996, but only the first experiment has been publicly reported to date (Coleman, 1996).

Suggested Citation

  • Coleman, Stephen, 2007. "The Minnesota Income Tax Compliance Experiment: Replication of the Social Norms Experiment," MPRA Paper 5820, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:5820
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    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5820/1/MPRA_paper_5820.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Coleman, Stephen, 1996. "The Minnesota income tax compliance experiment: State tax results," MPRA Paper 4827, University Library of Munich, Germany.
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    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Who cares if you don’t pay your taxes?
      by Guest blogger in Eval Central on 2013-12-19 17:30:08

    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Castro, Lucio & Scartascini, Carlos, 2015. "Tax compliance and enforcement in the pampas evidence from a field experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 65-82.
    2. Daniel Ortega & Carlos Scartascini, 2015. "Don't Blame the Messenger: A Field Experiment on Delivery Methods for Increasing Tax Compliance," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 91741, Inter-American Development Bank.
    3. Ortega, Daniel & Scartascini, Carlos, 2015. "Don’t blame the Messenger. A Field Experiment on Delivery Methods for Increasing Tax Compliance," Research Department working papers 821, CAF Development Bank Of Latinamerica.
    4. Moslem Soofi & Farid Najafi & Behzad Karami-Matin, 2020. "Using Insights from Behavioral Economics to Mitigate the Spread of COVID-19," Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 345-350, June.
    5. Biddle, Nicholas & Fels, Katja M. & Sinning, Mathias, 2018. "Behavioral insights on business taxation: Evidence from two natural field experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 30-49.
    6. Regan, Mark & Keane, Claire & Walsh, John R, 2018. "Using behavioural experiments to pre-test policy," Papers BP2019/2, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    7. Martínez Villarreal, Déborah & Parilli, Cristina & Scartascini, Carlos & Simpser, Alberto, 2021. "Let's (Not) Get Together!: The Role of Social Norms in Social Distancing during COVID-19," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 11038, Inter-American Development Bank.
    8. Biddle, Nicholas & Fels, Katja & Sinning, Mathias, 2017. "Behavioral insights and business taxation: Evidence from two randomized controlled trials," Ruhr Economic Papers 698, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    9. Coleman, Stephen, 2018. "Voting and conformity: Russia, 1993–2016," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 87-95.
    10. Martinangeli, Andrea F.M. & Windsteiger, Lisa, 2024. "Inequality shapes the propagation of unethical behaviours: Cheating responses to tax evasion along the income distribution," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 220(C), pages 135-181.
    11. Fabian Dvorak & Urs Fischbacher & Katrin Schmelz, 2020. "Incentives for Conformity and Anticonformity," TWI Research Paper Series 122, Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut, Universität Konstanz.
    12. Bott, Kristina Maria & Cappelen, Alexander W. & Sørensen, Erik Ø. & Tungodden, Bertil, 2017. "You’ve got mail: A randomised Field experiment on tax evasion," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 10/2017, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    13. Antonio Silva & Peter John, 2017. "Social norms don’t always work: An experiment to encourage more efficient fees collection for students," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(5), pages 1-9, May.
    14. Jon Elster, 2017. "On seeing and being seen," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(3), pages 721-734, December.
    15. Peter John & Toby Blume, 2018. "How best to nudge taxpayers? The impact of message simplification and descriptive social norms on payment rates in a central London local authority," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 1(1).
    16. Sloboda, Matúš & Pavlovský, Patrik & Sičáková-Beblavá, Emília, 2024. "Simplify and Deter: Nudging waste collection fee debtors," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 111(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tax compliance; experiment; social norms; social conformity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C9 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments
    • Z1 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance

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