Tax Compliance and Tax Morale: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis

✍ Scribed by Benno Torgler

• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 317
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The question of why citizens pay their taxes has attracted increased attention in the tax compliance literature of late. In this book, Benno Torgler considers the evidence that suggests that enforcement efforts cannot fully explain the high degree of tax compliance within society. To attempt to resolve this puzzle, numerous researchers have argued that citizens' attitudes towards paying taxes (defined as tax morale) help to explain the high degree of compliance. Yet most have treated tax morale itself as a black box, failing to discuss the issues influencing it. This unique volume provides important new insights into the factors that shape the emergence and maintenance of citizens' willingness to cooperate with tax legislations in different societies. Distinctive in its examination of citizen tax morale and tax compliance, this book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and students concerned with economics, political science, sociology, social psychology and accounting. It will also appeal to policymakers and practitioners.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 5
Preface......Page 6
Acknowledgements......Page 10
1. Introduction......Page 13
2. What do we know about tax morale and tax compliance?......Page 74
3. Speaking to theorists and searching for facts: tax morale and tax compliance in experiments......Page 95
4. The importance of faith: tax morale and religiosity......Page 123
5. Tax morale and institutions......Page 162
6. Tax morale in Latin America......Page 199
7. Does culture matter? A comparison of tax morale in the former East and West Germany......Page 225
8. Moral suasion: an alternative tax policy strategy? Evidence from a controlled field experiment in Switzerland......Page 249
9. Tax amnesties and political participation......Page 274
Index......Page 307