The Incentive to Declare Taxes and Tax Revenue: The Lottery Receipt Experiment in China

Indirect tax such as sales tax collection is difficult as the government has difficulty monitoring the actual economic dealings. To bring out private information on transaction only known to a firm and a consumer, China's government has set up a lottery receipt system which has been tried out in many areas. This paper empirically examines the validity of this new system. Estimation is performed based on panel data for different periods during 1998–2003 from a total of 37 districts in Beijing and Tianjin. It is found that the lottery receipt experiment (LRE) has significantly raised the sales tax and the growth of sales tax and total tax revenues.