How Does the Progressivity of Taxes and Government Transfers Impact People’s Willingness to Pay Tax? : Experimental Evidence across Developing Countries
This paper examines how the progressivity of taxes and government transfers impacts people’s willingness to pay tax through a randomized survey experiment with over 30,000 respondents across eight developing countries. Respondents increased (decrea...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2022
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099819509072218680/IDU0aaee5bc5034b5041d80901c0e9d06c8ad905 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37987 |
| Summary: | This paper examines how the
progressivity of taxes and government transfers impacts
people’s willingness to pay tax through a randomized survey
experiment with over 30,000 respondents across eight
developing countries. Respondents increased (decreased)
their willingness to pay taxes when they received accurate
information that taxes in their country are progressive (not
progressive). These effects were predominantly driven by
respondents in cases where the information they received was
counter to their prior beliefs and/or consistent with their
preferences. These results suggest changes in policies that
increase (decrease) the progressivity of tax systems may
also lead to increases (decreases) in tax compliance. |
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