Nudging Tax Compliance: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment

We test whether minimal, non-informative messages can nudge tax compliance beyond standard deterrence. In a within-subjects lab ex periment, we randomize exposure to either a reminder that leaves audit probability unchanged or an informative warning tied to higher audit probability, and estimate e¤ects on both the probability of eva sion and the share of income evaded. A short non-informative re minder, holding incentives xed, lowers the probability of evasion by about 16 percentage points, with no detectable e¤ect on the evaded share among evaders; informative messages add at most marginal ef fects once audit probability is controlled for.