Lying to the Taxman

Last registered on June 19, 2023

View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Lying to the Taxman

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0010576

Initial registration date

December 02, 2022

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

December 13, 2022, 10:15 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated

June 19, 2023, 1:55 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

Tanzania, United Republic of

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Christopher Hoy

Affiliation

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Jonathan Karver

PI Affiliation

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2022-12-03

End date

2023-12-31

Keywords

Firms & Productivity, Governance

Additional Keywords

Tax Morale, Tax Compliance, Field Experiment

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

We study how the presence of a tax official impacts taxpayers' willingness to declare noncompliance.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Hoy, Christopher and Jonathan Karver. 2023. "Lying to the Taxman." AEA RCT Registry. June 19. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.10576-1.1

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention Start Date

2022-12-05

Intervention End Date

2022-12-23

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Our primary outcomes of interest are based on the following questions in the survey: Q12, Q13b, Q13c, Q14, Q15, Q19, Q20a, Q20b, Q20c, Q20d

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Our secondary outcomes of interest are based on the following questions in the survey: Q13a, Q13d, Q13e, Q13f, Q13g, Q13h, Q13i, Q13o, Q13p, Q13u, Q13v, Q13y, Q16a, Q16b, Q17b, Q18, Q21

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

We will conduct a study about the drivers of willingness to pay tax with 1200 micro, small and medium sized firms across a series of urban and peri-urban locations in a medium sized developing country. Tax officials will accompany survey enumerators and be present during the interviews at a randomly selected subset of wards. In addition, the survey will include a randomized survey experiment examining how the progressivity of taxes influences people's willingness to pay tax.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization was done on STATA using the randtreat command.

Specifically the following STATA code was used (where Region_num denotes the region where the survey will take place, District_num denotes the district where the survey will take place and Setting_num denotes whether the survey will occur in a urban or peri urban location):
randtreat, generate(treatment) replace strata(Region_num District_num Setting_num) mult(2) misfits(global) setseed(12345)

Randomization Unit

Ward

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

121 wards

Sample size: planned number of observations

604 respondents in the treatment group and 596 respondents in the control group.

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

61 treatment wards and 60 control wards

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Around 10 percentage points on a binary outcome. This is based on the following STATA code: sampsi 0.65 0.75, power (0.8) alpha (0.05) sampclus, obs (10) rho (0.08)

Supporting Documents and Materials

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