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By increasing trust in institutions, public efficiency could be a further key determinant of tax morale. Public efficiency is closely related to the concept of productive public spending, while total public spending also depends on government ideology. In a society where public efficiency and tax morale are high, a virtuous "tax circle" can be triggered since government can increase both tax revenues and productive public spending. Using the Latinobarometer wave (which includes 20,204 interviewees from 18 Latin American countries), the empirical analysis finds that public efficiency would have to increase significantly before its marginal effect on tax morale becomes positive. Hence, the virtuous "tax circle" can trigger in the long term. However, the cross-sectional analysis cannot highlight the potentially significant role of ideological motives, so robustness checks are performed to show that our results are neither driven by such motives nor by the multilevel structure of the dataset or by the sample distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports on the impact of exposure to tax dilemmas on tax morale. We focus on young adults in their "impressionable years" and with little or no previous tax exposure in order to estimate the impact of actual (albeit experimental) exposure to tax dilemmas on their self-declared tax morale. First, we ascertain the participants' (N = 385), representation and attitudes towards tax, and second, we observe the impact of facing tax decisions on their present and future level of tax compliance. This allows us to investigate, in the realm of taxation, the generic question of knowing how one's history (and one's decisions) influences one's ethical representations and attitude. Although of less external validity than studies using naturally occurring events or historical periods, the use of an experimental simulation enables us to investigate the three different dimensions that could shape people's personal history: acting, experiencing and observing. Thanks to an interactive and systemic approach, participants are invited to make decisions in a tax context, to experience tax "events" and are given the opportunity to observe both their own behavior, that of others as well as the consequences of those actions, and repeat and test those three different steps several times. We find that the simulation tends to reduce honesty and ethical concerns with respect to taxation, a decrease in tax morale. This reduction seems to be driven by those subjects who were actually facing a tax dilemma and have to make a compliance decision. Other subjects, only observing or experiencing the effects of low tax compliance, are only marginally affected. One possible interpretation is that individuals have an initial overconfidence in their propensity to tax compliance and tax morale, which is challenged by their own decisions in typical dilemmas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

5 Incomes subject to substitute taxation, incomes of those with only exempt incomes, incomes of those that own only the main residence and the incomes of the owners of land and buildings with an income of less than 500 euros per year are not included. 4 Correlation between income inequality and tax evasion Apart from a few outliers, a positive correlation between income inequality and tax evasion in Italy is worth noting. This country is particularly representative of both tax evasion and income inequality, given that tax evasion amounted to almost 90 billion euros per year from 2010 to 2014, and in 2014, the share of taxpayers declaring an income above 200,000 euros was only 0.25% of the total (source: Italian Ministry of Economy). Keywords: Tax evasion; Income inequality; Social capital; Institutional quality index; Tax compliance; Propensity for evasion EN Tax evasion Income inequality Social capital Institutional quality index Tax compliance Propensity for evasion 309 320 12 10/29/21 20211201 NES 211201 The order of the authors is alphabetical. [Extracted from the article]

The present study investigates the impact of incidental emotions on tax compliance behavior in an experimental setting. Different theories are divided about how experiencing incidental emotions should influence tax decisions and the few existing studies yield inconsistent results. Our aim was to investigate differences between three specific emotions, namely anger, fear, and happiness. This allowed a comparison in compliance behavior as a function of differences in emotional valence as well as in specific emotional qualities. For this purpose, a sample of 264 individuals participated in a tax experiment. After a baseline treatment, one of the three emotions was induced using video-clips with background music. Moreover, emotional arousal was assessed by measuring electrodermal activity. Manipulation check items as well as elevated arousal levels after the emotion induction provided support for a successful emotion induction. Nevertheless, we did not observe any tax compliance differences between the anger, fear, and happiness conditions. Our results speak against a fundamental role of incidental emotions for tax compliance decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'slippery slope framework' suggests voluntary and enforced compliance as the two motivations underlying tax compliance behavior. Using questionnaire data based on a sample of 476 self-employed taxpayers we show that perceptions of procedural and distributive justice predict voluntary compliance, and trust in authorities mediates this observed relation. In addition, the relation between retributive justice, i.e. the perceived fairness with regard to the sanctioning of tax evaders, and enforced compliance was mediated by power, just as the relation between perceived deterrence of authorities' enforcement strategies and enforced compliance. With regard to both retributive justice and deterrence also a mediational effect of trust on the relation to voluntary compliance was identified. Furthermore, voluntary and enforced compliance were related to perceived social norms, but these relations were neither mediated by trust nor power. Our findings are of particular relevance since the literature identifies self-employed taxpayers as evading considerably more taxes than employees and therefore they are an important audience for interventions to raise tax compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With data gained from a controlled field experiment in Switzerland this paper analyses the effects of moral suasion on the timely paying and the timely filling out of the tax form 2001. Comparisons of different tax filing years and multiple regression estimations have been done using these two factors as dependent variables to check if there is a significant difference between the control group and the treatment group. In February 2002 the treatment group received a letter signed by the commune’s fiscal commissioner containing normative appeals. Results indicate that moral suasion has hardly any effect on taxpayers’ compliance behaviour. The strongest effect can be observed for the variable tax payments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]