Tax Morale and Fairness in Conflict - An Experiment

Christoph Engel, Luigi Mittone and Azzura Morreale
Additional contact information
Azzura Morreale: LUT University, Finland

No 2019_02, Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods from Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Abstract: Arguably, for many citizens the perceived expected disutility from sanctions is smaller than the monetary gain from tax evasion. Nevertheless most people pay their taxes most of the time. In a lab experiment, we show that the willingness to pay taxes even absent enforcement is indeed pronounced. Yet voluntary compliance is reduced if participants learn that income is heterogeneous. The effect is driven by participants with the lowest income. The reduction obtains irrespective of the tax regime. If the tax is proportional to income, or progressive, participants become more skeptical about the willingness of participants with high income to comply.

Keywords: tax evasion; tax morale; heterogeneity; income inequality; lump sum tax; proportional tax; progressive tax; beliefs; path model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C30 C91 D01 D02 D31 D63 D91 H26 K34 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-dcm, nep-exp, nep-iue, nep-law, nep-pbe and nep-pub
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2019_02online.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Tax morale and fairness in conflict an experiment (2020)
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:mpg:wpaper:2019_02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods from Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marc Martin ().