The Ethics of Tax Evasion: A Summary of Findings in Ukraine and 29 Other Studies

Abstract

A Catholic priest by the name of Martin Crowe wrote a doctoral dissertation titled The Moral Obligation of Paying Just Taxes in 1944. In it he summarized and analyzed 500 years of theological and philosophical debate on this topic, which identified three basic philosophical positions on the issue. Since then, not much has been written on the topic of tax evasion from an ethical perspective (McGee, 2006a). The present paper is an empirical study, the goal of which is to determine the strength of the 15 arguments justifying tax evasion that Crowe identified plus 3 more recent arguments. A survey was constructed using a seven-point Likert scale that included all three positions and all 18 arguments and distributed to 161 students at two universities in Odessa, Ukraine. The 18 arguments were ranked in terms of strength, from strongest to weakest. Comparisons were also made between various categories of statement to determine whether some reasons used to justify tax evasion were significantly stronger or weaker than others. Comparisons were also made with other studies that used a similar survey instrument.