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

财产税实验：测试工资、激励和审计对税务稽查员行为的作用

• 批准号: 1124134
• 负责人: Asim Khwaja
• 金额: $ 47.55万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-08-01 至 2017-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1124134&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Property; Tax; Experiment; Testing; Role

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.

财产税实验：检验工资、激励和审计对税务稽查员行为的作用[摘要]提高公共部门效率的一个核心问题是有效激励公务员努力工作而不寻求寻租。虽然这个问题在发展中国家更为突出，但在某种程度上，它在各地都是一个令人关切的问题，特别是在税务管理方面。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，特别是在税收部门。这项研究与巴基斯坦旁遮普省的税务和消费税部门合作，旨在检验各种工资和奖励办法对税务官员业绩的影响。该研究将侧重于评估税务稽查员的各种工资和激励机制，包括效率工资、将工资与税收挂钩的激励机制，以及在税收之外对准确性和客户满意度给予奖励的激励机制。我们之所以关注城市财产税，一方面是因为这是一个重要但相对尚未开发的收入来源，另一方面是因为独立的措施可以可靠地评估真实的纳税义务。该项目将作为一项随机实验来实施：个别税收单位（称为“圈子”）将被随机分配到三个主要方案之一：效率工资方案，其中工资将大约翻倍；奖励计划，将超过历史基准的所有税收收入的平均30%作为酬金退还给税务官员；还有一个奖励加计划，除了税收奖励外，税务官员还将根据其税收评估的准确性和客户满意度获得奖励。这些不同的方案使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在保持准确性和客户满意度的同时，通过在多个维度上明确激励收税人员来增加税收。据我们所知，这是世界上第一个关于税务稽查员激励措施的随机对照试验。通过衡量多种结果，我们有可能将低努力与其他渠道分开，并解开激励发挥作用的各种机制，例如在税收名册中增加新房产、更新房产估值、发行更多税单，以及在确保支付方面付出更大努力。虽然我们的重点是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。