Thousands of people who already had been contacted by the HMRC to pay their debts were then sent three types of reminders as part of a trial by the Government's Behavioural Insights Team (BIT).
Mentioning the financial "penalties" of failing to file tax returns on time was found to be the most effective message of increasing payment rates, followed by one that told recipients they were being "monitored" by HMRC.
The least effective was found to be a standard alert that told taxpayers how to pay their debt.
The report said: "Given that SMS messages are cheap to send, these results are very promising indeed."
Anita Monteith, senior tax policy adviser at the Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales, told the Telegraph: "People are always scared when they receive a message from HMRC – even the nice ones. Certainly anything threatening would not be acceptable."
A spokesman for HMRC said: "HMRC continually looks to improve how we contact our customers - including use of digital channels. The use of SMS provides customers with an alternative way of receiving information from us.
"This trial was designed as a prompt to help customers that had previously had a debt with us to get their affairs in order ahead of time for their next self-assessment deadline so they did not incur debts again as well as late payment penalties and interest.
"The text messages were not a threat, they were a reminder. In this trial we simply provided a prompt to remind them so they could avoid a repeat of previous costs and contact from HMRC."
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