Is Tax Compliance a Social Norm? A Field Experiment

Abstract

We study the effect of social pressure on tax compliance, focusing on the compliance of shop sellers to the legal obligation of releasing tax receipts for each sale. We carry out a field experiment on bakeries in Italy, where a strong gap exists between the legal obligation and the actual behavior of sellers. Social pressure is manipulated by means of an explicit request for a receipt when not released. We find that a single request for a receipt causes a 17 per cent rise in the probability of a receipt being released for a sale occurring shortly thereafter. This provides evidence of a social fiscal multiplier: on average, a single request for a receipt causes 2.38 additional receipts being released overall.

Keywords: Tax evasion, field experiements, social norms, social pressure

JEL Classification: H32, K34, E62