Does the use of tax revenue matter for tax compliance behavior?

•Does tax-compliance depend on tax-revenue usage?•Laboratory compliance experiment.•Four treatment groups that differ w.r.t. tax-revenue use.•Compliance likely to depend on tax revenue usage.

This paper explores whether the usage of tax revenues affects tax-compliance behavior. I design a laboratory experiment in which subjects make tax-reporting decisions and are randomly assigned to treatments that differ in tax-revenue use. The results indicate that compliance depends on tax-revenue usage.