Current Research Projects

PsychoTax

Verhaltenswissenschaftlich geleiteter Steuervollzug bei Klein- und Mittelunternehmen im Spannungsfeld zwischen kooperativer Zusammenarbeit und automatisierter „Überwachung“

Behavioral science-based tax enforcement for small and medium-sized enterprises caught between cooperative collaboration and automated “monitoring”

Funding: Excellence funding within the Field of Excellence Smart Regulation

Planned Project Duration: 04/2022 – 03/2023

Project Leads: Professor Barbara Gunacker-Slawitsch (Department of Tax and Fiscal Law) & Professor Katja Corcoran (Department of Psychology)

Cooperation Partner: Professor Robert Rybnicek (Department of Corporate Leadership and Entrepreneurship)

 

With the aim of increasing state revenues and conserving state resources, many countries – including Austria – are currently taking steps to further develop or realign their tax enforcement systems. In particular, modern technologies “designed” with the latest behavioral science findings in mind are to be used. According to the OECD's vision, taxpayers (especially in the SME sector) will in the near future only have to “fulfill” their tax obligations by using technical devices or programs that are connected to the state via the Internet. Information relevant to tax collection is to be transmitted automatically and in real time to the state, and tax enforcement is to become “virtually invisible” to taxpayers.

However, in a tax enforcement system that preserves freedom, citizen participation must continue to play a central role. Effective and efficient regulation of enforcement in a smart regulation approach, which also includes nudging, artificial intelligence (AI), and consensus-building instruments, therefore requires empirically based knowledge of the factors that influence the behavior and willingness to cooperate of taxpayers. The relevant OECD studies on this topic focus on large and internationally active companies; However, in countries such as Austria, the corporate landscape is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and numerous business studies have documented the special characteristics of SMEs. Furthermore, there has been no evaluation of psychological and behavioral economic studies on taxpayer behavior with regard to the challenges of modern tax enforcement in this sector. The initial aim of this project is to gain clearer insights into the behavior of taxpayers in the SME sector. It is expected that this will enable conclusions to be drawn, for example, for the design of modern technologies within a constitutionally permissible framework and that the limits of constitutionally permissible behavioral control can be better defined. Overall, tax enforcement must strike an appropriate balance between effectiveness and efficiency on the one hand and adequate protection of individual freedoms on the other.

In an interdisciplinary research project involving representatives from the fields of psychology, law, and business administration, proposals are being developed for a new regulation of tax enforcement in the SME sector, which could be implemented in Austria and serve as inspiration and a model for other countries.