Empathy, sympathy, and tax compliance

Empathy, sympathy, and tax compliance

This paper examines the effect of ‘‘empathy’’ and ‘‘sympathy’’ on tax compliance. We run a series of laboratory experiments in which we observe the subjects’ decisions in a series of one-shot Tax Compliance Games presented at once and with no immediate feedback. Importantly, we employ methods to identify subjects’ sympathy, such as the Davis Empathic Concern Scale and questions about frequency ...

Tax Compliance, Tax Compliance, Tax Morale, and Governance Quality

Taxpayers are more compliant than the traditional economic models predict. Why? The literature calls it the “puzzle of tax compliance”. In this paper we use field, experimental and survey data to investigate the empirical evidence on whether presence of tax morale helps to resolve this puzzle. The results reveal a strong correlation between tax morale and tax evasion/compliance which confirms t...

THE ADOLESCENT MEAUSRE OF EMPATHY AND SYMPATHY Development of the Adolescent Measure of Empathy and Sympathy (AMES)

Tax Compliance, Tax Morale and Governance Quality

Taxpayers are more compliant than the traditional economic models predict. Why? The literature calls it the “puzzle of tax compliance”. In this paper we use field, experimental and survey data to investigate the empirical evidence on whether presence of tax morale helps to resolve this puzzle. The results reveal a strong correlation between tax morale and tax evasion/compliance which confirms t...

Sympathy , Empathy , and the Evolution of Darwin ’ S Moral Sense

Dark portents of civil war were looming at the very time Walt Whitman celebrated the transformative song of empathy. “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels,” he wrote in his 1855 book Leaves of Grass, “I myself become the wounded person.” The ensuing battle over slavery, an institution that Charles Darwin called “the greatest curse on Earth,” would seem an unlikely place to find hope in ...