Reproducibility Package for Lying to the Taxman or Accepting a Helping Hand? Evidence From a Novel Experiment on SMEs in Tanzania

This paper presents the results from a novel field experiment that examined the impact of increasing the presence of revenue authority officers on tax compliance and tax morale among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in a lower-income country. The experiment was embedded into the implementation of a representative, face-to-face survey of SMEs across mainland Tanzania. An independent survey firm was accompanied by Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) officers, who observed the interviews in a randomly selected set of urban and peri-urban wards. This translated into a temporary increase in the presence of tax officers throughout parts of the country. Our findings indicate that an increase in tax officers presence did not have a significant overall impact on tax compliance and tax morale among SMEs, as measured using a combination of administrative and survey data. However, there were short-term increases in compliance in the largest city and sustained increases in tax morale in the rest of the country. A follow-up survey suggests that these results were likely driven by an increase in the perceived credibility of enforcement rather than meaningful increases in perceptions of facilitation and trust.