Improving Consumption-Based Tax Compliance : Evidence from Point of Sale Usage in Subnational Governments in Indonesia

This paper studies the impact of point of sale technology adoption on local tax compliance by firms. The paper exploits administrative data on monthly restaurant and hotel tax payments in the Indonesian districts of West Manggarai and Gorontalo and combines this with information on the point of sales distribution timeline from 2018 to 2022. The findings show that certain point of sales treatments led to a substantial increase in restaurant tax payments, ranging from 55 to 180 percent, while others did not increase tax revenues. The paper discusses the underlying drivers of the results and argues that the effectiveness of point of sales technology is conditional on (i) the devices' ease of use, (ii) the recipients' technological aptitude, and (iii) the presence of information accessible by third parties