Property Tax Experiment: Testing the Role of Wages, Incentives and Audit on Tax Inspectors' Behavior

财产税实验：测试工资、激励和审计对税务检查员行为的作用Adnan Q.Khan、Asim Ijaz Khwaja和Benjamin A.Olken摘要：提高公共部门效率的一个核心问题是有效地激励公务员做出努力，而不是诉诸于寻租。虽然这一问题在发展中国家更为突出，但在某种程度上，这是世界各地都令人关切的问题，尤其是税务管理方面的关切。虽然有大量关于官僚激励理论的理论文献，但很少有精心设计和评估的实证研究，特别是在税务部门。这项研究旨在与巴基斯坦旁遮普省的税收和税务局合作，测试各种工资和激励计划对税务官员业绩的影响。这项研究将重点评估税务稽查员的各种工资和激励方案，从效率工资、将工资与税收挂钩的激励机制，以及除了征收的收入外还奖励准确性和客户满意度的激励机制。我们关注城市财产税，既是因为这是一个重要但相对未开发的收入来源，也是因为独立的措施可以可靠地评估真实的纳税义务。该项目将以随机试验的形式实施：个别税务单位，也就是所谓的圈子，将被随机分配到三个主要方案中的一个：效率工资方案，工资将大约翻一番；激励方案，在该方案中，超过历史基准的所有税收收入的平均30%将作为酬金返还给税务官员；以及激励加方案，在该方案中，除了税收激励措施外，税务官员还将根据其纳税评估的准确性和客户满意度获得激励。这些不同的方案让我们不仅可以测试激励措施是否会增加税收，还可以测试政府是否可以通过明确地从多个方面激励税收征管者，在保持准确性和客户满意度的同时增加税收。据我们所知，这是世界上第一个关于税务稽查人员激励措施的随机对照试验。通过衡量多个结果，我们可以潜在地将低努力与其他渠道区分开来，并理清激励措施发挥作用的各种机制，例如在税单上增加新的房产，更新房地产估值，发行更多的税单，以及更大力度地确保支付。虽然我们专注于一个发展中国家和具体的干预措施，但更广泛的目标是产生可推广到世界各地其他环境的见解。

A Property Tax Experiment: Testing the Role of Wages, Incentives and Audit on Tax Inspectors' BehaviorAdnan Q. Khan, Asim Ijaz Khwaja, and Benjamin A. OlkenAbstract:A central problem in raising public sector efficiency is effectively incentivizing public servants to exert effort and not resort to rent-seeking. While this issue is more salient in developing countries, it is to some degree a concern everywhere, and is particularly a concern in tax administration. While there is a substantial theoretical literature on incentive theory for bureaucrats, there are few carefully designed and evaluated empirical studies, particularly in the tax sector. This study seeks to test the impact of various wage and incentive schemes on the performance of tax officials, in collaboration with the Excise and Taxation Department in Punjab, Pakistan. The study will focus on evaluating a variety of wage and incentive schemes for tax inspectors ranging from efficiency wages, incentive mechanisms that tie wages to revenue collection, and incentive mechanisms that give rewards for accuracy and customer satisfaction in addition to revenue collected. We focus on urban property tax, both because this is an important yet relatively untapped revenue source and because independent measures can reliably assess true tax liability. The project will be implemented as a randomized experiment: individual tax units, known as circles, will be randomly assigned to one of three main schemes: an efficiency wage scheme, in which wages will be approximately doubled; the incentive scheme, in which an average of 30 percent of all tax revenues above a historical benchmark will be rebated to the tax officials as an honorarium; and an incentive plus scheme, where in addition to the revenue incentives, tax officials will be incentivized based on the accuracy of their tax assessments and customer satisfaction. These different schemes allow us to test not only whether incentives increase tax collections, but also whether by explicitly incentivizing tax collectors on multiple dimensions the government can increase collections while maintaining accuracy and customer satisfaction. To the best of our knowledge, this represents the first randomized, controlled trial on incentives for tax inspectors anywhere in the world.By measuring multiple outcomes we can potentially separate low effort from other channels, as well as disentangle the various mechanisms through which incentives can matter, such as adding new properties to the tax rolls, updating property valuations, issuing more tax bills, and greater effort at ensuring payment. While we focus on one developing country and specific interventions, the broader goal is to generate insights that are generalizable to other settings throughout the world.