Tax Misperception and its Effects on Decision Making – Literature Review and Behavioral Taxpayer Response Model

Kay Blaufus, Malte Chirvi, Hans-Peter Huber, Ralf Maiterth and Caren Sureth-Sloane

European Accounting Review, 2022, vol. 31, issue 1, 111-144

Abstract: Previous accounting research shows that taxes affect decision making by individuals and firms. Most studies assume that agents have an accurate perception regarding their tax burden. However, there is a growing body of literature analyzing whether taxes are indeed perceived correctly. We review 128 studies on the measurement of tax misperception and its behavioral implications. The review reveals that many taxpayers have substantial tax misperceptions that lead to biased decision making. We develop a Behavioral Taxpayer Response Model on the impact of provided tax information on tax perception. Besides individual traits, characteristics of the tax information and the decision environment determine the extent of tax misperception. We discuss opportunities for future research and methodological limitations. While there is much evidence on tax misperception at the individual level, we hardly find any research at the firm level. Little is known about the real effects of managers’ tax misperception and on how tax information is strategically managed to impact stakeholders. This research gap is surprising as a large part of the accounting literature analyzes decision making and disclosure of firms. We recommend a mixed-method approach combining experiments, surveys, and archival data analyses to improve the knowledge on tax misperception and its consequences.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09638180.2020.1852095 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:euract:v:31:y:2022:i:1:p:111-144

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REAR20

DOI: 10.1080/09638180.2020.1852095

Access Statistics for this article

European Accounting Review is currently edited by Laurence van Lent

More articles in European Accounting Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().