Becoming Legible to the State: The Role of Identification and Collection Capacity in Taxation
Oyebola Okunogbe
Whereas the tax compliance literature emphasizes verifying tax liability amounts, this paper highlights two other tax capacity dimensions of particular relevance in lowerincome countries: identifying taxable entities and enforcing collection of known liabilities. Leveraging a newly-digitized property database, a randomized experiment in Liberia finds that including identifying information (owners’ names and property photographs) in tax notices more than quadruples the payment rate, from 2 percent to almost 10 percent, when the notice also details noncompliance penalties. A second experiment finds that signaling greater collection probability to delinquent taxpayers further increases compliance. These results highlight the importance of targeted investments in tax capacity.
Event: World Bank Land Conference 2024 - Washington
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