Response Times and Tax Compliance
1
School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia
2
Centre for Behavioural Economics, Society and Technology, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia
3
Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 4000, Australia
4
Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, CH-8008 Zürich, Switzerland
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Games 2019, 10(4), 45; https://doi.org/10.3390/g10040045
Received: 29 September 2019
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Revised: 18 October 2019
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Accepted: 21 October 2019
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Published: 4 November 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Empirical Tax Research and Application)
Inspired by the work of Rubinstein, this study revisits data from a previous lab experiment to explore the relation between response times and tax compliance and understand the potential non-linearity between them by classifying decisions and individuals into compliance types. We find that individuals’ decision response time is related to their compliance decisions. Full-non compliant individuals (those who did not declare any earned income) have shorter response times than those who fully or partially complied. Full-compliant individuals also tend to declare income faster than partially compliant subjects. Such results are robust throughout time and when controlling for contextual characteristics of experimental design. We find non-linearity via an inverted U-shape function that reaches its maximum declaration time around a compliance rate of 60%, even after controlling for contextual experimental design factors. In addition, we observe a non-linear relation between cognitive skills, response time, and tax compliance. Participants with relatively high cognitive skills and very low or very high tax compliance level have low response times, while subjects with relatively lower cognitive skills tend to report higher decision times for higher compliance levels.
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MDPI and ACS Style
Chan, H.F.; Dulleck, U.; Torgler, B. Response Times and Tax Compliance. Games 2019, 10, 45. https://doi.org/10.3390/g10040045
AMA Style
Chan HF, Dulleck U, Torgler B. Response Times and Tax Compliance. Games. 2019; 10(4):45. https://doi.org/10.3390/g10040045
Chicago/Turabian StyleChan, Ho Fai, Uwe Dulleck, and Benno Torgler. 2019. "Response Times and Tax Compliance" Games 10, no. 4: 45. https://doi.org/10.3390/g10040045
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