Getting the word out: Enforcement information dissemination and compliance behavior

The question for the tax authority is how individuals become aware of enforcement effort. To be an effective tool in reducing tax evasion taxpayers must be aware of the Current audit and penalty regime. We use laboratory experiments to examine the compliance impact of types of information dissemination regarding audit frequency and results. The information includes "official" information disseminated by the tax authority, and "unofficial", or informal, communications among tax payers. Our results,; indicate that the effect of the type of post-audit information is conditional oil whether the taxpayer is well informed of the audit rate prior to filing. We find that the tax authority would be served by pre-announcing audit rates credibly and by emphasizing the previous period audit frequency in annual reporting of enforcement effort. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.