| The scarcity of evidence of tax compliance for countries other than the United States is a call for researchers to design empirical studies that contribute to better understand of the problem of compliance. The present work provides experimental evidence about the problem of tax compliance in Mexico for the first time. I analyze the impact of two different policies that the tax authority could pursue on the compliance rate. One policy is to increase enforcement forces, such as penalties for noncompliance and increasing the probability of audit. The other is to create positive inducements for compliance. The effect of the performance of the government is also tested in the experiment. The results indicate that (i) increasing the probability of audit, always increases compliance, which confirms the prediction of the Allingham-Sandmo model; (ii) penalty rates increase compliance, but only to a certain level; (iii) there is a negative relationship between tax rates and compliance, a fact that goes against the Allingham-Sandmo model; (iv) there is free riding all along public goods sessions, even when the government is efficient in the provision of the public good; (v) positive incentives are better incentives to increase compliance than deterrence factors; (vi) compliance rates are higher in the presence of positive inducements than when the government performance in the provision of public goods is efficient. I also compare my results to compliance experiments administered in Spain and the United States. |
