Ethics, Tax Evasion and Religion: A Survey of Opinion of Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Abstract

Most studies that have been done on tax evasion take a public finance perspective. Very few studies look at tax evasion from the perspective of ethics, philosophy, or religion. However, there are some exceptions. A study by McGee (1994) took a philosophical approach. One of the most comprehensive analyses of tax evasion from an ethical and religious perspective was a doctoral thesis written by Martin Crowe in 1944. The Journal of Accounting, Ethics & Public Policy published a series of articles on tax evasion from various religious, secular, and philosophical perspectives in 1998 and 1999. Most of those articles were also published in an edited book (McGee 1998a). Since the publication of that book, a few other articles have addressed the issue of tax evasion from an ethical perspective.