Citizen tax compliance significantly dictates governmental fiscal capacities. Recognizing this, understanding the determinants of tax compliance remains paramount. While existing literature frequently isolates and tests individual determinants such as audit likelihood, penalty structures, tax...

We experimentally analyze three anti-tax-evasion mechanisms: (1) prefilling of deductions in tax returns, (2) restricting tax evasion opportunities by either disallowing or (3) limiting the deductibility of expenditures. We find that prefilling compared to blank forms reduces tax evasion....

We study how taxes and subsidies affect portfolio choices in a laboratory experiment. We find highly significant differences after intervention, even though the net income is identical in all our treatments and thus the decision pattern of investors should be constant. In particular, we observe...

Emotions have a strong impact on our everyday lives in general and judgment and decision making in particular. Our paper presents the first study to show that incidental emotions, i.e., emotions not related to the actual choice problem, influence individuals' tax compliance behavior. A survey of...

Emotions affect judgments and decision making. Our paper presents the first study to show that incidental background emotions (i.e., emotions not related to the actual decision) influence individuals’ tax compliance attitudes and behavior. A large-scale survey of 22,220 German taxpayers and a...

We analyze how the redistribution of tax revenues influences tax compliance behavior by applying different reward mechanisms. In our experiment, subjects have to make two decisions. In the first stage, subjects decide on the contribution to a public good. In the second stage, subjects declare...

Although there is already a variety of papers analyzing tax evasion decisions, only little focus is put on tax evasion of gains and losses. As taxpayers can evade taxes by either underreporting their income or by overdeducting expenses, we study whether there is a significant difference if...