Becoming Legible to the State

• Tác giả: Oyebola Okunogbe
• Ngôn ngữ: eng
• Ký hiệu phân loại: 027.5 *Government libraries
• Thông tin xuất bản: World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021
• Bộ sưu tập: Tài liệu truy cập mở
• ID: 308777
• Chủ đề: 1. FISCAL CAPACITY; 2. REAL ESTATE TAX; 3. STATE CAPACITY; 4. TAXATION; 5. TECHNOLOGY

Tóm tắt

Whereas the tax compliance literature emphasizes verifying tax liability amounts, this paper highlights two other tax capacity dimensions of particular relevance in lower-income countries: identifying taxable entities and enforcing collection of known liabilities. Leveraging a newly-digitized property database, a randomized experiment in Liberia finds that including identifying information (owners' names and property photographs) in tax notices more than quadruples the payment rate, from 2 percent to almost 10 percent, when the notice also details noncompliance penalties. A second experiment finds that signaling greater collection probability to delinquent taxpayers further increases compliance. These results highlight the importance of targeted investments in tax capacity.