Replication Data for: The Distributive Basis of Tax Compliance

Citizens' tax compliance is, in part, a choice. In this paper, we revisit the mechanisms driving self-enforcement in quasi-voluntary compliance, thus contributing to an old puzzle in political economy: why do people pay taxes? We theorize compliance as a {\it revealed} preference for the state's intervention in the economy and argue that there is a {\it distributive logic} to it. The design and expected incidence of the tax and transfer system moderate citizens' choice to comply with tax obligations. The focus on fiscal designs allows differentiating between the role of material incentives (income) and other-regarding preferences (altruism) as determinants of compliance. Through a lab experiment, we establish a strong and significant interaction effect between these institutional variables and two individual-level characteristics: income and other-regarding preferences. The altruistic rich comply more than the non-altruistic rich. By contrast, the non-altruistic poor complies more when the system is designed to benefit the poor substantially.