Research
Work in Progress
Do We Speak the Same Language? Tax Lexical Complexity, Compliance and MisperceptionsAbstract.
This project investigates how the modality of tax communication influences taxpayers’ understanding, perceptions, and compliance behavior. Motivated by the upcoming implementation of the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) in Norway, we exploit this regulatory change as an opportunity to study how communication formats—plain text, infographic, or narrated video—affect both stated and actual compliance outcomes. We adopt a mixed-method design. First, a large-scale survey experiment elicits taxpayers’ perceptions of clarity, comprehension, and fairness, alongside their stated compliance intentions under standardized vignettes. Second, a field randomized controlled trial (RCT) in collaboration with the Norwegian Tax Administration tests the causal impact of communication modality on actual reporting of crypto-assets. By holding informational content constant and varying only the delivery medium, we isolate the role of language and presentation in shaping compliance. This design further allows us to explore mechanisms, such as the correction of misperceptions, shifts in trust and perceived complexity, and heterogeneous responses across socio-demographic groups and levels of financial literacy. Taken together, the survey and RCT provide complementary evidence on how communication strategies can reduce reporting frictions in an area characterized by novel, complex, and low-compliance tax obligations. Our results will contribute to the literature on tax compliance and public communication, and inform tax administrations on the effectiveness and limits of format-driven interventions as a low-cost complement to enforcement.
Abstract.
We examine the unintended domestic consequences of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), a U.S.-led global tax transparency initiative, in the context of a non-haven economy. Drawing on detailed micro-level data on Norwegian Financial Institutions and their customers, we study both compliance costs and behavioral responses following the introduction of Automatic Exchange of Information (AEoI). At the institutional level, FATCA is associated with increases in operating costs for Financial Institutions facing additional reporting requirements, though these do not appear to translate into measurable changes in perfomance measures. At the customer level, U.S. citizens residing in Norway face systematically tighter credit conditions relative to Norwegian residents, pointing to constraints in both debt access and deposit activity.
Who Owns Norway? (with Julie Burn Bjørkheim, Elisa Casi-Eberhard, Barbara Stage and Floris Zoutman)