Incentive effects of the IRS' passport certification and revocation process

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Organ, Paul R.; Ruda, Alex; Slemrod, Joel; Turk, Alex
• 署名单位: University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104625
• 发表日期: 2022
• 关键词: tax compliance; Tax enforcement; Collateral sanctions

摘要

Traditional penalties for tax noncompliance are financial, but many jurisdictions now also use nonmonetary tools, including collateral sanctions that deny access to some government-provided service. To learn about the effectiveness of one such penalty, we examine a recent U.S. policy restricting passport access for taxpayers with substantial tax debt, known as certification. We take advantage of a field experiment during the policy rollout, and find small but positive effects on taxpayer compliance of the certification notice sent to eligible taxpayers. We then study a subset of certified taxpayers who were denied a passport-related request, and find an immediate and strong positive effect of the denial on compliance. (C) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.