Applying Behavioral Insights to Improve Tax Collection : Experimental Evidence from Poland
Mobilizing domestic revenues efficiently is a priority for the Government of Poland, but it is not easy. There are numerous instruments that can be used to achieve this objective. Traditional measures to boost government revenues include changes to...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/928731497243427428/Applying-behavioral-insights-to-improve-tax-collection-experimental-evidence-from-Poland http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27528 |
| Summary: | Mobilizing domestic revenues efficiently
is a priority for the Government of Poland, but it is not
easy. There are numerous instruments that can be used to
achieve this objective. Traditional measures to boost
government revenues include changes to the tax legislation
and reforms in the area of tax administration. Such measures
can have a large fiscal impact, but are often politically
challenging to design and negotiate, and can take time to
implement. Behavioral interventions often focus on adapting
existing systems and processes and can thus be implemented
relatively quickly and at a low cost. Overall, they are an
additional tool in the policy toolkit that country
authorities have to improve tax compliance, and thus
complement but do not substitute traditional measures to
establish effective tax collection systems including changes
in tax legislations and tax administration reforms.
Behavioral interventions can also help the Tax Authority to
align its strategy more accurately to taxpayer behavior. The
Polish authorities were interested in applying insights from
behavioral economics to their communications with taxpayers
to see if making small changes could promote tax compliance.
This paper summarizes the results of a randomized controlled
trial (RCT) that used letters to remind taxpayers in Poland
to pay their taxes. These taxpayers had declared their
personal income tax (PIT) for the 2015 fiscal year but had
failed to pay what they owed by the deadline, April 30, 2016
(i.e., taxpayers in arrears). The trial took place between
May and August 2016 and covered a total of 149,925
individual taxpayers. |
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