Governments have taken remarkable measures during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in their efforts to safeguard citizens' health and the economy. As a consequence, public debts have reached unprecedented levels, which will require at some point higher taxes. Ensuring that citizens pay these taxes...

This paper analyses how tax morale and countries’ institutional quality affect the shadow economy, controlling in a multivariate analysis for a variety of potential factors. The literature strongly emphasizes the quantitative importance of these factors to understand the level and changes of...

Why so many people pay their taxes, although fines and audit probability are low, has become a central question in the tax compliance literature. Concepts of Homo Economicus, endowed with a more refined motivation structure, help to shed light on the tax compliance puzzle. This paper provides...

The tax compliance literature has mainly focused on individual tax evasion rather than firm tax evasion. In general, there is a lack of field experiments on the topic, and measuring tax compliance is challenging. To address this shortcoming in the literature, we conduct a field experiment on...

Historically, tax compliance has been a highly interdisciplinary avenue of research to which economics, psychology, law, sociology, history, political science, and accountancy have made valuable contributions. It is less well understood, however, whether we can glean useful insights into tax...

Field experiments in the area of tax compliance are rare. This field experiment generates a unique data set with respect to individuals' under-declaration of income and wealth and over-deductions of tax credits by obtaining exclusive full access to the audits. Using this commune level data from...

Research evidence on the impact of relative income position on individual attitudes and behaviour is sorely lacking. Therefore, this paper assesses such positional impact on social capital by applying 14 different measurements to International Social Survey Programme data from 25 countries. We...

In the spirit of previous work in the compliance literature (e.g., tax, littering), we investigate whether environmental social norms affect volunteering in environmental organizations. Using two ‘environmental morale’ variables as indirect measures, we analyze the impact of social norms on...

Field experiments in the area of tax compliance are rare. This field experiment generates a unique data set with respect to individuals’ under-declaration of income and wealth and over-deductions of tax credits by obtaining exclusive full access to the audits. Using this commune level...

Although paying taxes is a key element in a well-functioning civilized society, the understanding of why people pay taxes is still limited. What current evidence shows is that, given relatively low audit probabilities and penalties in case of tax evasion, compliance levels are higher than would...