Tax Culture and Trust

Abstract

Abstract The purpose of this research is to study the influence of the level of public trust in various social institutions and structures on shaping tax culture. The authors identify three components of tax culture, namely, tax morality, tax literacy, and tax behavior. Institutional trust as the main component of a tax paying culture has a strong impact on tax morality. The groups with a high level of institutional trust have only about a third as many tax deviations as the groups with a low level of institutional trust. Over the past decade, Russia has seen a gradual increase in trust, which contributes to strengthening tax morality and raising the level of tax culture in the population. This is manifested in increased tax collection and reduced tax arrears. Nevertheless, tax opportunism still persists in Russian society. Almost a third of citizens do not consider themselves obliged to pay taxes and are tolerant of tax deviations. This fact may serve as a factor in the reproduction of deviant forms of taxpayer behavior, together with a low level of tax literacy in the population.