Tax Morale: Direct and Indirect Paths between Trust Factors: Empirical Evidence from Greece

Abstract

A plethora of evidence can be found in the literature supporting the view that citizens’ trust in the state plays a decisive role in their overall tax compliance. Nevertheless, in Greece, where the consequences of a ten years long economic crisis still exist, the phenomenon of tax evasion is still dealt with traditional enforcement methods like penalties, regular audits, and tax policy. A new conceptual model is proposed and empirically tested using data from 1,014 Greek citizens from fifty areas of Greece. It attempts to examine the combined effect of ten trust-related factors, which are grouped into four dimensions on tax morale (trust in governance quality, trust in principles and institutions, trust in fellow citizens and trust in personal perceptions). The results show that Greek citizens’ trust in tax reciprocity is the factor that mainly affects tax morale, with citizens’ trust in tax authorities and in the institution of democracy closely following.