Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/97269 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
arqus Discussion Paper No. 164
Publisher: 
Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre (arqus), Berlin
Abstract: 
In this paper, a tax game with audit costs as a public bad is designed to investigate the impact of public disclosure on tax evasion experimentally. Three different types of tax privacy are tested, ranging from complete privacy to full disclosure. We expect to observe two different effects: first, a contagion effect, arising when an individual observes non-compliance of other individuals and therefore reduces his own tax compliance; second, a shame effect of increased tax compliance due to the anticipated shame of being declared a tax evader. We find evidence of increasing tax evasion with reduced tax privacy if information is disclosed anonymously. Our results also indicate that the shame effect is not strong enough to override the contagion effect when both effects are present. Our results are of particular importance for fiscal policy because public disclosure may lead to more evasion instead of less, due to motivational crowding-out of tax morale.
Subjects: 
Tax privacy
Tax evasion
Public bad
Social norm
Conditional cooperation
Economic experiment
JEL: 
H24
H26
H30
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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