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

Abstract:     
This 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 compliance can be increased by informing them about the true rate of cheating. Tax compliance, therefore, is influenced partly by social conformity with perceived social norms. 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).

Number of Pages in PDF File: 6

Keywords: income tax, tax compliance, social norms, social conformity, experiment, Minnesota

JEL Classification: C12, C33, C93, H20, H26

working papers series