Tax evasion and voting
- Author(s)
- Lars P. Feld, Jean Robert Tyran
- Abstract
The puzzle of tax compliance is why people pay taxes instead of evading them: Given the low expected fines, rational taxpayers should underreport taxable income. However, most taxpayers truthfully declare their income to the tax authorities, a behaviour that is usually explained by tax morale. In this paper, we study in an experimental setting which factors shape tax morale. The main result is that the higher legitimacy of an endogenous fine as compared to an exogenously determined fine leads to higher tax compliance. This result is robust to competing explanations like commitment and reciprocity.
- Organisation(s)
- External organisation(s)
- Universität St. Gallen
- Journal
- Kyklos
- Volume
- 55
- Pages
- 197-221
- No. of pages
- 25
- ISSN
- 0023-5962
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6435.00183
- Publication date
- 2002
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 502010 Public finance
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous), Economics and Econometrics
- Portal url
- https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/tax-evasion-and-voting(177958a7-d337-4013-a644-8eaad6eb55ca).html