Analyzing Determinants of Tax Morale based on Social Psychology Theory: Case study of Iran (original) (raw)

Evaluating the individual- and country-level variations in tax morale

Journal of Economic Studies, 2017

Purpose Recently, a small but burgeoning literature has argued that tax non-compliance cannot be fully explained using the conventional rational economic actor approach which views non-compliance as occurring when the pay-off is greater than the expected cost of being caught and punished. Instead, a social actor approach has emerged which views tax non-compliance as higher when “tax morale”, defined as the intrinsic motivation to pay taxes, is low. To advance this social actor model, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the individual and national heterogeneity in tax morale, which is crucial if tax compliance is to be improved. Design/methodology/approach To do this, the authors report data from the 2010 Life in Transition Survey on tax morale in 35 Eurasian countries. Findings Logit econometric analysis reveals, on the one hand, that there is higher tax morale among middle-aged, married, homeowners with children, with a university degree and employed, and on the other hand, th...

Evaluating the individual-and country-level variations in tax morale: Evidence from 35 Eurasian countries

Purpose – Recently, a small but burgeoning literature has argued that tax non-compliance cannot be fully explained using the conventional rational economic actor approach which views non-compliance as occurring when the pay-off is greater than the expected cost of being caught and punished. Instead, a social actor approach has emerged which views tax non-compliance as higher when “tax morale”, defined as the intrinsic motivation to pay taxes, is low. To advance this social actor model, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the individual and national heterogeneity in tax morale, which is crucial if tax compliance is to be improved. Design/methodology/approach – To do this, the authors report data from the 2010 Life in Transition Survey on tax morale in 35 Eurasian countries. Findings – Logit econometric analysis reveals, on the one hand, that there is higher tax morale among middle-aged, married, homeowners with children, with a university degree and employed, and on the other hand, that there is higher tax morale in more developed countries with stronger legal systems and less corruption, and higher levels of state intervention in the form of both taxation and expenditure. Research limitations/implications – Rather than continue with the rational actor approach, this paper reveals that how an emergent social actor approach can help to more fully explain tax non-compliance and results in a different policy approach focused upon changing country-level economic and social conditions associated with low tax morale and thus non-compliance. Practical implications – These results display the specific populations with low tax morale which need targeting when seeking to tackle tax non-compliance. Originality/value – This paper provides a new way of explaining and tackling tax non-compliance in Eurasian countries.

Tax Morale Determinants in Portugal

European Scientific Journal, ESJ, 2015

Tax morale has been recognized as the key to understand the levels of compliance achieved in most countries in the world. We applied a structural equation model (SEM) to gain a better understanding about the factors shaping tax morale of Portuguese taxpayer’s. Our purpose was to analyze through SEM the direct effects of political democratic system, political participation, religiosity, individual satisfaction, trust in others and institutional trust on tax morale. A sample of 1,553 Portuguese individuals representative of Portuguese population obtained from European Values Study (EVS), carried out in 2008-2010 was used. The results confirmed that Portuguese taxpayers´ tax morale is influenced by taxpayers trust on institutions like government, parliament and the judicial system, by political participation and by the belief that democracy is a good political system for governing the country. Tax morale is also influenced by individual´s satisfaction, by religiosity and by societal be...