Calendrier du 09 septembre 2022
EU Tax Observatory Seminar
Du 09/09/2022 de 12:00 à 13:00
Salle R 1.13, Campus Jourdan
NICOLAIDES Panayiotis (EU Tax Observatory, Hertie School Berlin)
Electronic Payments Lottery and Tax Revenue: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Greece
This paper studies a third-party reporting policy - the Greek electronic payments lottery - which incentivises the use of electronic payments over cash to fight tax evasion. The lottery allocates tickets automatically to the entire population of consumers, proportional to their electronic payments, and offers €1 million in prizes split to 1,000 winners every month. Taking advantage of a delayed introduction, 10 monthly draws with 10,000 winners and €10 million in prizes took place retroactively in Christmas 2017. Participation was unanticipated and tickets corresponded to electronic payments completed in previous months. To identify the effect on VAT revenue, I combine information from the universe of winners, a random sample of 50,000 non-winners and monthly VAT revenue from regional tax offices. I estimate (a) every additional winner randomly allocated to a tax office’s jurisdiction, leads to an overall increase of 0.01% in VAT revenue (b) winners initially increase their electronic consumption by 15% after winning, then decrease it to pre-winning levels after 5 months (c) in regions with large number of winners, there is evidence of spillover effects in the electronic consumption of non-winning individuals. While the policy does not change payment habits permanently, the overall revenue effect is fiscally positive.