Frontline delivery as behavioral policy: a framework for tax compliance

Deterrence and behavioral tax research explain why enforcement credibility and message design can affect compliance, yet the delivery of an unchanged legal action during direct taxpayer contact remains under-specified. This Perspective advances a Frontline Behavioral Delivery Framework that operationalizes five dimensions: clarity, sequencing, personalization, procedural treatment, and consequence salience. It distinguishes their primary hypothesized mediators, identifies likely cross-paths, and specifies four conditional, directional propositions for engagement, timely action, payment, and resolution. A comparison of evidence from Australia, Colombia, and Bulgaria illustrates the feasibility of frontline interventions but also the limits of bundled and nonrandomized designs. An illustrative randomized tax-debt contact experiment shows how clarity could be varied while substantive legal authority remains constant. The framework offers an empirically testable integration of existing theories, not a new psychological mechanism or a demonstrated causal effect, and emphasizes safeguards against coercion and unequal substantive treatment.