The fundamental difficulties in empirical work on tax compliance involve the vagueness of relevant definitions, the lack of reliable information on taxpayers’ compliance and methodological problems. In the light of these difficulties, this paper suggests using a systematic approach to explore...

Following the behavioural branch of tax compliance literature, this paper tries to incorporate tax morale into the optimal taxation theory. We show that tax morale affects the optimal mix of policy tools of deterrence to clamp down tax evasion. The optimal tax policy in fact differs according to...

Policymakers often propose strict enforcement strategies to fight the shadow economy and to increase tax morale. However, there is also a bottom-up approach such as, for example, decentralizing the political power to those who are close to the problems. Thus, this paper analyses the relationship...

There is considerable evidence that enforcement efforts cannot fully explain the high degree of tax compliance. To resolve this puzzle of tax compliance, many researchers have argued that citizens? attitudes toward paying taxes or tax morale, seen as the intrinsic motivation to pay taxes, can...

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 intention of this paper is to analyse how audit courts affect tax morale, controlling in a multivariate analysis for a broad variety of potential factors. Switzerland with its variety of audit court competences among the cantons has been analysed. With data from the ISSP for 1999 evidence...