An empiric approach

It is well-known that, in general, people don´t like to pay taxes, there are even Facebook groups expressing this. Tax non-compliance is no small matter because it means an important tax gap for national revenues.

What would be necessary to improve the payment of taxes by citizens in a voluntary way? How would taxes be seen in a more positive point of view than now?

There are several examples of experiments that try to improve tax compliance. I have seen experiments before with the same goal but the following Northamerican example, in particular, asks this question: Could we make people hate taxes a little less, and in the process increase tax compliance?

For this goal, this experiment finds two solutions to two different problems:

1)  Problems:

• First, taxpayers have little sense of where their money is actually going.
• Second, taxpayers feel that they have no influence in the decision-making as to where their taxes will be spent.

2)  Solutions:

• The first is to better inform people, bridging the knowledge gap between paying taxes and the public goods that taxpayers receive in return.
• The second is to give taxpayers an opportunity to express their preferences on public spending.

The results indicate that if people are given the opportunity to express a preference on how their taxes are spent, they are much less likely to cheat. Simply by making the tax form more interactive, governments could increase tax compliance, while empowering citizens and improving their attitudes towards taxation.

In your opinion, would this kind of experiments have positive results for your country?

Waiting for your opinions…

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