Study • Civic · Taxes
Do Normative Appeals Affect Tax Compliance? Evidence from a Controlled Experiment in Minnesota
Blumenthal et al. (2001), ‘Do Normative Appeals Affect Tax Compliance? Evidence from a Controlled Experiment in Minnesota’, National Tax Journal
Summary by Mark Egan
A field experiment in Minnesota in 1994 tested the efficacy of normative messages in letters to taxpayers. There were 3 conditions in total; 2 treatments and a control, each consisting of 20,000 people. The first treatment group received the standard tax letter plus a rational appeal for paying their taxes (“your taxes fund local services such as X, Y, Z”). The second treatment received the standard letter plus a social normative message (“People who file tax reports report correctly and pay voluntarily 93% of the income taxes they owe. Although some taxpayers owe money because of minor errors, a small number of taxpayers who cheat owe the bulk of unpaid taxes”).The results found no significant effect of the normative messages on tax declarations.
Tactics used
TACTICS
Social Norms
Behaviors addressed
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