What Makes People Want To Pay Taxes?

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Photo: Disney Tax PSA Screenshot (YouTube)
Donald Duck in a Disney public service announcement from World War II.

Governments around the world have spent years trying to figure out how to get more people to pay their taxes. Check out these videos -- a modern-day one from Sweden and a Donald Duck cartoon made during World War II -- that urge people to contribute what they owe to government coffers. Economist Sven Steinmo of the University of Colorado Boulder tells Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner about why some people pay their taxes and others don't. Steinmo has also researched what Americans would do if they were in charge of the tax overhaul now being debated in Congress.

Below: A World War II era Disney public service announcement about saving money to pay taxes, and a more modern Swedish PSA depicting a world in which people don't pay taxes.