Tax Morale and the Role of Social Norms and Reciprocity – Evidence from a Randomized Survey Experiment * Philipp Doerrenberg Andreas Peichl September 11, 2020 Abstract We present the results of a survey (representative for the German population) with randomized components in the context of tax compliance. We first document the anatomy of tax morale and present novel evidence that previously found gender differences in tax morale are not driven by gender differences in risk preferences. The experimental component of our survey allows us to investigate the role of social norms and reciprocity for tax morale. One experimental treatment manipulates the social norm of tax compliance through the provision of information about the magnitude of the tax gap. The second treatment adds an appeal to reciprocity; it informed by how much education expenditures could be increased if the tax- gap-induced foregone revenue was available to the government. We find that the social-norm treatment reduces tax morale, while the reciprocity treatment has a positive effect on tax morale. This suggests that a potential backfire effect of social norms is outweighed if the consequences of violating the social norm are made salient in an appeal to reciprocity. JEL Classification: H20, H32, H50, C93 Keywords: Tax compliance, Tax evasion, Intrinsic motivations, Tax morale, Social norms, Reciprocity, Survey Experiment * Doerrenberg: University of Mannheim, CESifo, ZEW and IZA. Email: [email protected]. Peichl: ifo Institute, University of Munich, CESifo, IZA and IHS. Email: [email protected]. Eva Schoenwald and Felicitas von Dombois provided excellent research assistance. We thank Zareh Asatryan, Sebastian Blesse, Albrecht Bohne, Sebastian Camarero Garcia, Julie Cullen, Mathias Dolls, Denvil Duncan, Christoph Feldhaus, Roger Gordon, Paul Hufe, Ilyana Kuziemko, Armando Meier, Daniel Mueller, Carina Neisser, Joerg Paetzold, Emmanuel Saez, Jan Schmitz, Joel Slemrod, Holger Stichnoth, Christian Traxler and Nils Wehrhoefer as well as various seminar participants for helpful comments and suggestions. This paper uses data from the German Internet Panel wave 14 (DOI: 10.4232/1.12620; Blom et al. 2016). A study description can be found in Blom et al. (2015). The German Internet Panel (GIP) is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through the Collaborative Research Center 884 ”Political Economy of Reforms” (SFB 884).
Tax Morale and the Role of Social Norms and Reciprocity – Evidence from a Randomized Survey Experiment
Jul 04, 2023
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