Behavioral Responses to Taxation: Evidence from Field Experiments and Tax Policy Variation

这项建议的目的是使用四种新的设计来估计对税收和转移计划的行为反应：(1)使用与美国的一个大型纳税筹备者的随机现场实验，以估计关于一个大型转移计划的信息--劳动所得税抵免--对接受者随后的收入行为的影响。(2)利用丹麦税务局进行的随机现场实验，分析税务审计和关于未来税务审计的公告对税收遵从的影响。(3)使用1992年大幅提高工资税上限的希腊基于队列的工资税改革(但仅针对1992年及以后开始工作的人)来估计工资税对收入和劳动力供应行为的长期影响(4)使用欧洲大陆国家(如法国)与英语国家(如美国)之间按关系程度划分的遗产税税率的巨大差异来估计遗产税对财富积累的影响。拟议活动的潜在智力价值是显著提高我们对税收和政府转移的经验性行为反应的了解。这种理解对于评估政府税收和转移支付政策的成本和收益至关重要，从而有助于决策者设计更好的税收和转移支付制度。为了在这一问题上取得进展，该提案提出了四项创新性的研究设计。前两个设计涉及分析大型随机田间试验，而后两个设计则利用实际税法产生的差异。信息对税收行为反应的影响以前几乎没有被探索过，而且可能是反应大小的一个重要决定因素。如果这种影响很大，政府可以以适度的成本增加旨在促进某些行为的项目的信息。劳动所得税抵免信息实验是朝着这个方向进行的一次开创性尝试。税收执法是成功实施税收的关键。税务机关往往对税务执法工作保密，因此特别难对其进行分析。丹麦税务总局进行了一项大规模的随机税务审计现场试验，并将为我们提供全面的数据访问以进行分析。这一伙伴关系提供了一个独特的机会，可以严格评估税收执法的效果，并测试具体的执法战略。众所周知，评估工资税的关联效应以及劳动力供给对所得税的长期反应是非常困难的，因为比较税制改革前后的结果的研究只衡量了对税收的短期反应。希腊基于群体的工资税改革是一项不同寻常的政策实验，因为它在同一个劳动力市场创造了两组工人，仅仅根据他们进入劳动力大军的日期，他们面临着永久性的、非常不同的工资税时间表。希腊社会保障管理局一直愿意提供详尽的行政数据来研究这项改革。最后，在有关遗产税的政策辩论中，财富积累对遗产税的反应是核心。使用基于关系程度的税率变化(在一些国家但不是在其他国家)提供了一种新的方法来解决这一棘手的经验问题。拟议活动产生的更广泛的影响是，为政府税务机构(如丹麦税务执法项目或希腊工资税改革)或私营公司(如劳动所得税收抵免信息项目的大型报税人)之间的伙伴关系制定一种模式，这种模式既可促进科学知识，也可改进税收和转移政策的设计和实际执行。在劳动所得税抵免项目中，我们还计划尝试与美国国税局发展合作伙伴关系，以获得更多数据。访问公司或政府的大型行政数据库以及进行实地试验的可能性可能会变得越来越普遍。这项NSF赠款申请背后的一个更广泛的目标是推广斯堪的纳维亚国家等最先进国家为研究目的访问数据的经验，以便改善美国等目前研究访问受到更多限制的国家的数据访问。

The objective of this proposal is to estimate behavioral responses to taxation and transfer programs using four novel designs: (1) Use a randomized field experiment with a large tax preparer in the United States in order to estimate the effect of information about a large transfer program--the Earned Income Tax Credit--on the subsequent earnings behavior of recipients. (2) Use a randomized field experiment carried out by the tax administration in Denmark in order to analyze the effects of tax audits and announcements about future tax audits on tax compliance. (3) Use a cohort based payroll tax reform in Greece where the ceiling on payroll taxes was significantly increased in 1992 (but only for those starting to work in 1992 and after) to estimate the long-run incidence of payroll taxes on earnings and labor supply behavior (4) Use the very large variation in estate tax rates by degree of relationship in continental European countries (such as France) vis-à-vis English speaking countries (such as the United States) to estimate the effect of estate taxation on wealth accumulation. The potential intellectual merit of the proposed activity is to significantly advance our knowledge of empirical behavioral responses to taxes and government transfers. Such an understanding is crucial to evaluate the costs and benefits of government tax and transfer policies and hence to help policy makers design better tax and transfer systems. The proposal offers four innovative research designs in order to make progress on this question. The first two of the designs involve analyzing large randomized field experiments, while the remaining two exploit variation created by actual tax laws. The effect of information on behavioral responses to taxation has hardly been explored before and could be a significant determinant to the size of the responses. If such effects are large, the government could increase information of programs designed to promote certain behaviors at a modest cost. The Earned Income Tax Credit information experiment offers a pioneering attempt in that direction. Tax enforcement is critical for successful tax implementation. Tax enforcement efforts are most often kept secret by tax authorities making them particularly difficult to analyze. The Danish tax administration carried out a large randomized tax audit field experiment and will give us full data access for the analysis. This partnership offers a unique opportunity to evaluate rigorously the effects of tax enforcement as well as test specific enforcement strategies. Evaluating the incidence effects of payroll taxes as well as the labor supply responses to earnings taxation in the long-run is notoriously difficult because studies comparing outcomes before and after a tax reform measures only the short-term response to taxation. The cohort based payroll tax reform in Greece is an unusual policy experiment because it creates two groups of workers in the same labor market which face permanently very different payroll tax schedules based solely on their date of entry in the labor force. The Greek Social Security Administration has been willing to supply exhaustive administrative data to study this reform. Finally, the response of wealth accumulation to estate taxation is central in the policy debate on the estate tax. Using variation in tax rates based on the relationship degree (in some countries but not others) offers a novel way to make progress on this difficult empirical question. The broader impact resulting from the proposed activity is to develop a model for partnerships between either a government tax agency (as in the case of the Danish tax enforcement project or the Greek payroll tax reform) or a private company (as in the case of the large tax preparer for the Earned Income Tax Credit information project) that could be fruitful both for advancing scientific knowledge but also for improving the design and the practical implementation of tax and transfer policies. In the case of the Earned Income Tax Credit project, we are also planning on trying to develop a partnership with the US Internal Revenue Service for additional data access. Access to company or government large administrative databases as well as the possibility to run field experiments is likely to become more and more prevalent. A broader goal behind this NSF grant application is to promote the experiences for data access for research purposes from the most advanced countries such as Scandinavian countries in order to improve data access in countries such as the United States where access for research is currently more restricted.