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

纳税义务与合规问题密切相关。在大多数国家，个人必须提交纳税申报单来确定他们的纳税义务。由于数字化转型，纳税人通常从预先填写的表格开始纳税申报。使用税务软件或在网上提交纳税申报单(通过电子申报服务)的客户发现，电子纳税申报单程序通常会将前一年的价值转移到下一年，作为一种指导。因此，当前的纳税申报单最初预先填写了去年的数字(例如，工资、业务收入、费用、扣除额、税收抵免)。然而，预先填写的数据往往是不正确的，因为从上一年结转的数据不能完全反映本年度的情况。此外，预填装在许多国家的税务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单。因此，纳税人收到的纳税申报单已经预先填好了数据，而不是手动填写空白表格。尽管税务机关预先填写的纳税申报单应该是高度可信的，但数据输入和数据传输可能会发生错误。在拟议的项目中，我们的目标是通过一项大规模的调查来测试一个新的税收遵从性决策框架。10万德国纳税人和几个受控的实验室实验。我们将研究以下主要研究问题。首先，电子报税表和预先填写的报税表的使用频率以及哪些个人特征决定了这种使用。第二，预先填写的报税表是否简化了报税表的提交？第三，电子和预先填写的纳税申报单如何影响纳税遵从行为？在这里，我们将重点关注正确和错误预填的收入和扣除项目。第四，关于真实纳税申报项目的不完全信息如何改变预先填写的纳税申报对合规行为的影响？最后，我们将调查电子和预先填写的纳税申报单的使用如何影响纳税遵从成本？

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?