Low tax compliance in low- and middle-income countries around the world limits the ability of governments to offer effective public services. This paper reports the results of a text message campaign aimed at promoting tax compliance among landowners in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Landowners were randomly assigned to one of four groups designed to test different aspects of tax morale. They received a simple text message reminder to pay their tax (a test of salience), a message highlighting the connection between taxes and public services (reciprocity), a message communicating that people who did not pay were not contributing to local or national development (social pressure), or no message (control). Recipients of any message were 18 percent (or 2 percentage points) more likely to pay any property tax by the end of the study period. While each type of message resulted in gains in payment rates, total payment amounts were highest for those who received reciprocity messages. The average estimated benefit-cost ratio across treatments is 36:1 due to the low cost of the intervention, with higher cost-effectiveness for reciprocity messages. However, there was significant geographic heterogeneity in both treatment effect sizes and estimated cost-effectiveness across the city, highlighting potential gains to program effectiveness in cases where such heterogeneity can be predicted ex-ante.
This working paper was first published in August 2022. The original version is available here. It was updated in July 2024.
