Digital Transformation and Taxation – The Effects of Prefilled Tax Returns on Tax Compliance Behavior and Tax Compliance Costs

纳税的义务与遵守义务的问题密切相关。在大多数国家，个人必须提交纳税申报表以确定其纳税义务。由于数字化转型，纳税人通常以预填表格开始纳税申报。使用税务软件或在线提交纳税申报表（使用电子申报服务）的客户发现，电子纳税申报表程序通常会将前一年的价值结转到下一年，作为一种定向帮助。因此，当前的纳税申报表最初预先填写了去年的数字（例如，工资、营业收入、费用、扣除额、税收抵免）。然而，预填的数据往往不正确，因为从上一年结转的数据不能充分反映本年度的情况。此外，预灌装在许多国家的税收机构的工作中发挥着重要作用。税务机关与雇主、社会保险机构和银行之间的自动数据交换使系统能够创建在发送给纳税人之前预先填写的纳税申报表。因此，纳税人收到的纳税申报表中已经预先填写了数据，而不是手动填写空白表格。虽然税务机关预填的纳税申报表应该是高度可信的，但在数据输入和数据传输中可能会发生错误。在拟议的项目中，我们的目标是通过大规模的调查来测试一个新的税收合规决策框架。10万德国纳税人和几个受控实验室实验。我们将研究以下主要研究问题。首先，电子报税表和预填报税表的使用频率如何，以及哪些个人特征决定了这种使用。第二，预先填写的纳税申报表是否简化了纳税申报？第三，电子化和预填式纳税申报表如何影响纳税遵从行为？在这里，我们将重点放在正确和错误的预填收入和扣除项目。第四，真实纳税申报项目信息不完整如何改变预填纳税申报表对合规行为的影响？最后，我们将调查如何使用电子和预填纳税申报表影响税收遵从成本？

The obligation to pay taxes goes hand-in-hand with the question of compliance. In most countries, individuals must file tax returns to determine their tax liability. As a consequence of the digital transformation, taxpayers often start their tax declarations with prefilled forms. Customers who use tax software or file their tax returns online (with e-filing services) find that electronic tax return programs usually carry over the previous year’s values to the subsequent year as an orientation aid. Consequently, a current tax return is initially prefilled with last year’s numbers (e.g., salary, business income, expenses, deductions, tax credits). However, prefilled data is often incorrect, as data carried forward from the previous year does not fully reflect the conditions of the current year. Furthermore, prefilling plays a significant role in the work of revenue bodies in many countries. Automatic data exchanges between the tax authority and employers, social insurance agencies and banks enable systems to create tax returns that are prefilled before they are sent to taxpayers. Consequently, instead of completing blank forms manually, taxpayers receive tax returns that are already prefilled with data. Although tax returns prefilled by tax authorities should be highly trustworthy, errors in data input and data transmission can occur. In the proposed project we aim to test a novel framework of tax compliance decisions by means of a large-scale survey with approx. 100,000 German taxpayers and several controlled laboratory experiments. We will examine the following main research questions. First, how frequently are electronic and prefilled tax returns used and which individual characteristics determine this usage. Second, do prefilled tax returns simplify the filing of tax returns? Third, how do electronic and prefilled tax returns affect tax compliance behavior? Here, we will focus on both correctly and incorrectly prefilled income and deduction items. Fourth, how do incomplete information about true tax return items alter the influence of prefilled tax returns on compliance behavior? Finally, we will investigate how the use of electronic and prefilled tax returns influences tax compliance costs?