1. It is cryptic, time consuming and makes you feel stupid. Every year.
2. It forces you to involuntarily “spend” up to 45% of your income on it (european tax %)
3. It does not give you any feedback on what is done with your money
Right now paying taxes is one of very few things people do to directly financially contribute to the common good. And we all value community (yes, we can etc.).
So why don’t we make an effort of making people feel good about their spent money?
Improving the tax payers' experience
If we could enhance the overall experience by 10%, what would that mean for involvement of people with their community and politics?
This would mean a completely different experience.
How do we get to do this?
I think it might be the best to focus on a few simple changes, which do not involve the tax declaration itself (this probably involves a lot of technical, legislative and political things which we can not address here):
1. if we could enhance the overall experience, and maybe honesty by 0,1%, how much extra revenue would that mean?
From research on priming: could one
a) use quotations of leaders with moral authority for the different constituencies?
b) personalize the letter by being signed by f.e. the president, Congress etc.?
2. If one has filed his declaration, a thank you letter would do fine. After all, I just gave away a lot of money.
3. If I get a new tax declaration, maybe
a) you can fill me in on what you achieved with it last year, so I might have some form of satisfaction.
b) But also define where still major work is needed, so I might feel inclined to feel engaged in getting those things in place.
4. one can even think of comparative information:
How would it be if paying a lot of taxes would be considered especially honorful (in stead of stupid)?
This is only a fraction of the possibilities, when will we see some changes?
Vincent
Inspired by Daniel Ariely's Post on Honesty:
What do you think?
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