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

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。Khan，Asim Ijaz Khwaja和Benjamin A.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努力工作，而不是诉诸寻租。虽然这一问题在发展中国家更为突出，但在某种程度上，这是一个普遍关切的问题，在税务管理方面尤其令人关切。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，特别是在税收部门。本研究与巴基斯坦旁遮普的消费税和税务局合作，试图测试各种工资和奖励计划对税务官员业绩的影响。这项研究的重点是评估税务检查员的各种工资和奖励办法，包括效率工资、将工资与税收挂钩的奖励机制，以及除了税收之外还奖励准确性和客户满意度的奖励机制。我们关注城市房产税，一方面是因为这是一个重要但相对未开发的收入来源，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试验来执行：被称为“圆圈”的各个税务单位将被随机分配到三个主要计划之一：效率工资计划，其中工资将大约翻一番;奖励计划，其中超过历史基准的所有税收收入的平均30%将退还给税务官员作为酬金;以及一个奖励加计划，除了税收奖励外，税务官员还将根据其税务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，还可以测试通过在多个维度上明确激励税务人员，政府是否可以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员激励措施的随机对照试验。通过衡量多种结果，我们可以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，例如在税收名单中增加新的财产，更新财产估价，发布更多税单，加大支付力度。虽然我们侧重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.