Some comments

Through my experience with projects in Latin America related to tax education, I was already aware of the “tax lottery” game in some Latin American countries, which has spread as a measure against fraud as for example in the cases of El Salvador and Paraguay . In countries like these where in most places no tickets or tax payment vouchers are issued, such initiatives are useful for creating public awareness of the need to require this voucher, encouraging people with prizes (incentives). On the other hand, they also help the tax administration to collect more indirect taxes (VAT) from the informal economy.

So far I thought that these games were oriented more toward collection than control purposes and that their operation had more success in developing countries where the concept of citizenship grows together with the awareness of tax duties. However, the other day I was surprise to read in the El Pais newspaper that Portugal was joining the “bandwagon” of this type of anti fraud games.

To what extent do these initiatives actually raise tax awareness? Has your country had experiences with these anti- fraud measures? Do you consider that a tax lottery in Spain would be successful to fiscally educate its citizens on the need to ask for the voucher as part of civic duties?

Such initiatives remind me of this one, developed by the Pamplona Municipality a couple of years ago where they tried to “encourage” recycling in exchange for movie tickets. However, the measure had to be revoked a few months later because of the citizens’ mischievousness. (They cut packaging into pieces so the machine would count more and thus they would get more points). And I wonder, would Pamplona citizens really recycle more than other Spanish cities based on this initiative?

From my point of view, this type of specific initiatives are not recommended for improving long-term tax awareness (or environmental as the case of Pamplona) of citizens, for achieving higher rates of voluntary tax compliance. These are obviously tax collection measures with a negative impact on taxpayers because they are given incentives for actions that should be mandatory and taught through tax education, which builds a solid national tax culture. When these incentives are no longer given, would they continue asking the tickets or would they stop asking for them since no more prizes are offered in return? Based on your experience in your country, do you think these measures have a positive impact on citizens?

Finally, I would like to share on another type of “tax lottery” developed by Costa Rica which I do think could have a greater impact on the fight against fraud and more important on the citizens´ tax awareness. This is to provide incentives for using credit cards and debit cards especially for those economic sectors where higher levels of fraud are detected. Do you think this initiative would be interesting for Spain or in your countries or do you disagree with me?

Let’s keep thinking about it

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