LAlthough taxes are an instrument for financing the public sector, they also represent a particularly effective tool for controlling the decisions of economic operators. The modulation of the tax burden, increasing for certain activities and decreasing for others, actually aims to favor decisions , which are consistent with the objective pursued by the public decision-maker, and to discourage those who are less consistent with this objective.

The strength of taxation is that it creates the conditions for these signals to be immediately followed by impact: the price fluctuations that accompany the modulation of tax rates naturally tend to favor the most heavily taxed decisions in favor of those whose taxation is affected discourage reduced. Taxation does not represent a form of social signaling, a “socio-score” aimed at stigmatizing certain decisions and praising others, but rather acts as a control console for the public decision-maker, allowing fine control of economic decisions.

For example, if a municipality decides to change the cost of parking the most polluting vehicles (and/or those vehicles that take up more space in public space), it is not about penalizing the owners of these vehicles. The aim is simply to increase the cost of use, so that it becomes more advantageous to align the vehicle purchase decision more closely with the goals of reducing pollution and space utilization. Audience.

The unexpected effects of financial incentives

The effectiveness of taxes and, more generally, financial sanctions lies in their ability to shift consumption and production decisions to options that have become more advantageous due to price fluctuations. Current considerations about the possibility of introducing a tax to penalize patients who fail to attend a doctor’s appointment (known as the “rabbit tax”) are part of the same argument.

Such a measure would be effective if the sanction only modified the financial consequences of such behavior. However, much recent research shows that financial incentives have unexpected effects on decisions that involve a moral dimension, as they pose a significant risk of displacing these moral motivations in favor of decisions based solely on financial considerations.

This idea emerged in economic thought during an intense debate between the founder of social policy research, the British Richard Titmuss (1907-1973), and the most famous economists of the 1970s, who were convinced that market forces act on all forms of goods and claimed, for example, that introducing a financial reward for blood donations could only increase supply.

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