Previous research has shown that people accept inequalities resulting from differences in performance but aim at reducing those resulting from differences in luck, corresponding to the fairness principle of just deserts. But will just deserts also intrinsically prevent people from cheating for...

In a laboratory experiment on tax compliance, we model a situation in which high-income taxpayers can leave a tax system that finances a public good. We compare low-income taxpayers' compliance decisions and equity perceptions across treatments in which they are informed or not informed about...

This paper reports on a laboratory experiment designed specifically to test the influence of national pride on tax honesty while using a physiological marker to observe emotional responses to patriotic priming. Participants were exposed to one of three framing videos before earning income in a...

In this paper we focus on the compliance effects of tax regime changes. According to the economic model of tax evasion, a tax reform should affect compliance through its impact on tax rates and incentives. Our findings demonstrate the importance of at least two further effects not covered by the...

We investigate the impact of trust in authorities on tax compliance within a controlled laboratory setting. Embedded in two hypothetical tax systems with high and low power of authorities respectively, we gradually increase trust in authorities in form of tax knowledge about public expenditures...

Tax evasion costs governments worldwide trillions of U.S. dollars. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of tax evasion behavior is needed to ensure that tax evasion is combatted effectively. Using different controlled and incentivized experiments, we analyze whether taxpayers are more willing to...

Crackdowns have been widely recognized as an efficient means of deterrence. However, existing studies investigate only exogenous crackdowns. To fill this gap, we design an experiment in the context of tax evasion to analyze the efficacy of endogenous crackdowns, that is, sudden and dramatic...

The purpose of this study is to experimentally investigate an analytical model of tax compliance, assuming a game-theoretic situation between a taxpayer and a tax auditor. Specifically, we focus on the following three research questions. First, would the taxpayer's behavior change if the tax...

We employed a game-theoretic framework to formulate and analyze a number of tax audit rules, especially the lowest income reporter audited rule. We explicitly considered the auditor's resource constraint to choose one target from a continuous type of taxpayer. We then tested the theoretical...

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...