IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cra/wpaper/2004-13.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Effects of Culture on Tax Compliance: A Cross Check of Experimental and Survey Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Ronald G. Cummings
  • Jorge Martinez-Vazquez
  • Michael McKee
  • Benno Torgler

Abstract

There is considerable evidence that enforcement efforts can increase tax compliance. However, there must be other forces at work because observed compliance levels cannot be fully explained by the level of enforcement actions typical of most tax authorities. Further, there are observed differences, not related to enforcement effort, in the levels of compliance across countries and cultures. To fully understand differences in compliance behavior across cultures one needs to understand differences in tax administration and citizen attitudes toward governments. The working hypothesis is that cross-cultural differences in behavior have foundations in these institutions. Tax compliance is a complex behavioral issue and its investigation requires the use of a variety of methods and data sources. Results from laboratory experiments conducted in different countries demonstrate that observed differences in tax compliance levels can be explained by differences in the fairness of tax administration, in the perceived fiscal exchange, and in the overall attitude towards the respective governments. These experimental results are shown to be robust by replicating them for the same countries using survey response measures of ?tax morale.?

Suggested Citation

  • Ronald G. Cummings & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez & Michael McKee & Benno Torgler, 2004. "Effects of Culture on Tax Compliance: A Cross Check of Experimental and Survey Evidence," CREMA Working Paper Series 2004-13, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
  • Handle: RePEc:cra:wpaper:2004-13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.crema-research.ch/papers/2004-13.pdf
    File Function: Full Text
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.crema-research.ch/abstracts/2004-13.htm
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cinzia Castiglioni & Edoardo Lozza & Albino Claudio Bosio, 2018. "Lay People Representations on the Common Good and Its Financial Provision," SAGE Open, , vol. 8(4), pages 21582440188, October.
    2. Benno Torgler & Friedrich Schneider, 2005. "What Shapes the Attitudes Towards Paying Taxes? Evidence from Switzerland, Belgium and Spain," CREMA Working Paper Series 2005-06, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    3. Ji Seon Yoo & Ye Ji Lee, 2019. "National Culture and Tax Avoidance of Multinational Corporations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(24), pages 1-28, December.
    4. Gloria Alarcón García & Arielle Beyaert & Laura de Pablos, 2012. "Fiscal Awareness: A Study of Female versus Male Attitudes Towards Tax Fraud in Spain," Chapters, in: Michael Pickhardt & Aloys Prinz (ed.), Tax Evasion and the Shadow Economy, chapter 4, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Gerxhani, Klarita & Schram, Arthur, 2006. "Tax evasion and income source: A comparative experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 402-422, June.
    6. Torgler, Benno & Schneider, Friedrich, 2007. "Shadow Economy, Tax Morale, Governance and Institutional Quality: A Panel Analysis," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt26s710z8, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    7. Kazi Abdul, Mannan & Khandaker Mursheda, Farhana, 2023. "The new fiscal sociology: a study of universal self-Assessment taxpayers in Bangladesh," MPRA Paper 117151, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2023.
    8. Torgler, Benno & Schneider, Friedrich, 2009. "The impact of tax morale and institutional quality on the shadow economy," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 228-245, April.
    9. Benno Torgler & James Alm & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, 2005. "Russian Attitudes Toward Paying Taxes – Before, During, and After the Transition (2005)," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper0518, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    10. Piroska Dobos, 2017. "How do we pay tax? - Taxation-related behaviors," Proceedings of FIKUSZ 2017, in: Monika Fodor (ed.),Proceedings of FIKUSZ '17, pages 57-66, Óbuda University, Keleti Faculty of Business and Management.
    11. Benno Torgler & Friedrich Schneider, 2004. "Does Culture Influence Tax Morale? Evidence from Different European Countries," CREMA Working Paper Series 2004-17, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    12. Kemme, David M. & Parikh, Bhavik & Steigner, Tanja, 2020. "Tax Morale and International Tax Evasion," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 55(3).
    13. Marina Purina, 2021. "Human Freedom and Effective Corporate Income Tax Rates of CEE Listed Companies," European Financial and Accounting Journal, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2021(2), pages 05-28.
    14. Alm, James & Torgler, Benno, 2006. "Culture differences and tax morale in the United States and in Europe," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 224-246, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tax Compliance; Tax Evasion; Tax Morale; Culture;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cra:wpaper:2004-13. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Anna-Lea Werlen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cremach.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.