When Do Beliefs, About the Values of Others, Affect Tax Compliance and Honesty?

75 Pages Posted: 19 Jan 2022

See all articles by Tom Kisters

Tom Kisters

Vienna University of Economics and Business - Department of Economics

Date Written: January 19, 2022

Abstract

When do ex-ante beliefs about the values of others affect compliance and honesty? To answer this question, we conduct an experiment, in which subjects face repeated trade-offs between monetary gain and honesty. As a source of exogenous variation, half of the subjects were told that their choices would be shared with the other subjects in the room. We show that: 1) the belief that peers value honesty more, (only) leads to a crowding-in effect when these subjects know that their choices will become public. 2) the crowding-in effect is dependent on ex-ante beliefs about the values of others.

Keywords: Social Norms, Injunctive Norms, Tax Compliance, Honesty

JEL Classification: C91, C92, H26, A13, C35

Suggested Citation

Kisters, Tom, When Do Beliefs, About the Values of Others, Affect Tax Compliance and Honesty? (January 19, 2022). WU International Taxation Research Paper Series No. 2022-01, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4012624 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4012624

Tom Kisters (Contact Author)

Vienna University of Economics and Business - Department of Economics ( email )

Augasse 2-6
A-1090 Wien
Austria

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
90
Abstract Views
452
Rank
513,029
PlumX Metrics