A letter from the tax office: Compliance effects of informational and interpersonal justice

It has been argued that authorities attract greater compliance when they treat people according to principles of interactional and procedural justice. Set in the context of taxation, the present research investigates the effects on behavioral compliance of reminder letters adopting principles of informational and interpersonal fairness compared with a standard reminder notice. Study 1 with 199 students confirmed that both fairness letters were regarded as fairer than the standard letter. In Study 2, a field experiment, 2052 Australian taxpayers who had an obligation to file a tax declaration but failed to file on time were randomly sent one of the three reminder letters. The two fairness letters yielded a significantly greater compliance rate than the control letter. © 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.