Tax Evasion: Cheating Rationally or Deciding Emotionally?
نویسندگان
چکیده
Tax Evasion: Cheating Rationally or Deciding Emotionally? The economic models of tax compliance predict that individuals should evade taxes when the expected benefit of cheating is greater than its expected cost. When this condition is fulfilled, the high compliance however observed remains a puzzle. In this paper, we investigate the role of emotions as a possible explanation of tax compliance. Our laboratory experiment shows that emotional arousal, measured by Skin Conductance Responses, increases in the proportion of evaded taxes. The perspective of punishment after an audit, especially when the pictures of the evaders are publicly displayed, also raises emotions. We show that an audit policy that induces shame on the evaders favors compliance. JEL Classification: C91, C92, D87, H26
منابع مشابه
DE TRAVAIL - WORKING PAPERS W . P . 07 - 24 Tax Evasion : Cheating Rationally or Deciding Emotionally ?
The economic models of tax compliance predict that individuals should evade taxes when the expected benefit of cheating is greater than its expected cost. When this condition is fulfilled, the high compliance however observed remains a puzzle. In this paper, we investigate the role of emotions as a possible explanation of tax compliance. Our laboratory experiment shows that emotional arousal, m...
متن کاملTax Evasion in Oil-Exporting Countries: The Case of Iran
N umerous studies have been conducted about the determinants of tax evasion. In all of these studies, this phenomenon has been taken into account in the framework of balanced budget and a non-oil economy. In this study the determinants are examined by extending an endogenous growth model and considering two cases for the government budget in an oil-exporting country along with its budget d...
متن کاملCheating, Emotions, and Rationality: An Experiment on Tax Evasion
The economics-of-crime approach usually ignores the emotional cost and benefit of cheating. In this paper, we investigate the relationships between emotions, deception, and rational decision-making by means of an experiment on tax evasion. Emotions are measured by skin conductance responses and self-reports. We show that the intensity of anticipated and anticipatory emotions before reporting po...
متن کاملTax Evasion and Coordination
We consider corporate tax evasion as a decision a¤ecting business partners. There are costs of uncoordinated tax reports, both in terms of catching inspectorsattention and running accounts. If these costs are small, there exist a unique Nash equilibrium of the game between the tax authority and a population of heterogenous rms. In this equilibrium, the miscoordination costs enhance non-compli...
متن کاملTax evasion and emotions: An empirical test of re-integrative shaming theory
Shaming can be either of two types, shaming that becomes stigmatization of the offender and favors his exclusion from the community, or shaming that is followed by forgiveness and reintegration of the deviant. Here we test experimentally these aspects of shaming theory with a repeated tax-payment game, in which the shaming ‘‘ritual’’ consisted of displaying the evader’s picture in addition to c...
متن کامل