Direct and Indirect Effects of Tax Enforcement: Experimental Evidence from the D.R.C.

Tax compliance is a key challenge for low-capacity states seeking to expand their tax base. A first-order question that remains largely unanswered in the developing world context is: what are the direct and indirect /network effects of government’s enforcement efforts on tax compliance and bribe payments? This project will generate experimental evidence by randomly allocating connected firms to different tax enforcement treatments that vary in intensity or to a control condition in the context of a tax collection campaign in the city of Kananga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.