The role of fairness in tax compliance

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study the relation between fairness considerations and tax compliance attitudes and intentions. Data from a large panel survey among small business owners in the Netherlands were analysed. Besides a number of background and control variables the questionnaire contained measures of personal norms, procedural and distributive justice, tax compliance attitudes and intentions to comply with tax rules. Results support the hypothesis that personal norms and justice concerns are related to tax compliance attitudes. Moreover, analyses confirm the hypothesis that distributive fairness positively affects both tax compliance attitudes and intentions to comply among entrepreneurs with relatively low personal norms, while distributive justice has no significant effect among entrepreneurs with high personal norms. Implications of these results for research on tax compliance and for tax policy are discussed. (Netherlands Journal of Psychology, 65, 136-145).