Increasing Timely Tax Payment with Implementation Intentions: A Field Experiment

The authors report a large-scale field experiment designed to increase tax filing behavior among late-filing organizations. Applying a novel theoretical perspective to the tax collection literature, the experiment tests the effects of instilling delinquent organizations with implementation intentions by providing them with a tax payment plan. At no additional cost to the government, this experiment caused subject organizations to remit tens of millions of additional tax dollars within a month and saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in collection costs. These results suggest that tax payment procrastination may be explained not by a lack of motivations to pay, but rather the absence of a plan that facilitates putting those motivations into action. The results also clearly demonstrate the value of applying insights from the academic literature to governance and its financing.