The administration of tax policy has shifted its focus from enforcement to complementary instruments aimed at creating a social norm of tax compliance. In this paper we provide an analysis of the effects of information regarding the past degree of tax evasion at the social level on the current individual tax compliance behavior. We build an experiment where subjects declare their income after receiving either a communication of the average tax evasion rate (“official information”) or a private message from a group of randomly matched peers about their tax behavior (“unofficial information”). We use the experimental data to estimate a dynamic econometric model of tax evasion and find three main results. First, tax compliance is very persistent, but less so in the presence of information. Second, the higher the officially communicated past tax evasion rate, the higher the degree of persistence: former evaders are more likely to evade again (and evade more), and former compliant individuals are more likely to comply again (and, when evading, evade less). Third, when an unofficial communication of past evasion (compliance) from all their peers is received, both former evaders and compliant individuals are more likely to evade (comply) again.

税收政策的管理已经将其重点从执行转移到了旨在建立税收遵从性社会规范的补充工具。在本文中，我们提供了有关过去社会层面上逃税程度的信息对当前个人税收合规行为的影响的分析。我们建立了一个实验，受试者在收到平均逃税率（“官方信息”）或一组随机匹配的同龄人关于其税收行为的私人信息（“非官方信息”）后声明自己的收入。我们使用实验数据来估算逃税的动态计量经济学模型，并找到三个主要结果。首先，税收合规非常持久，但是在有信息的情况下却很少。第二，官方传达的过去逃税率越高，持久性的程度就越高：以前的逃税者越有可能再次逃避（越逃越多），而以前的合规者越有可能再次逃避（越逃越越少逃避） 。第三，当收到来自所有同龄人过去的回避（遵从）的非正式通知时，既往的回避者和顺从的个人都更有可能再次回避（遵从）。