Ethics Of Tax Evasion Research Articles

A survey of law, business and philosophy students in China on the ethics of tax evasion

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to learn the views of law, business and philosophy students in China on the ethics of tax evasion.Design/methodology/approachThis paper begins with a review of the literature and identifies the main issues and summarizes the three main viewpoints that have emerged over the centuries. It then reports on the results of a survey of Chinese law, business and philosophy students who were asked their opinions on the ethics of tax evasion. The survey consisted of 15 statements, representing the 15 issues and three viewpoints that have emerged over the centuries. Participants were asked to signify the extent of their agreement with each statement by placing a number from 1 to 7 in the space provided. About 256 usable responses were received. The data were then analyzed to determine which of the three viewpoints was dominant among the sample population. The three groups were compared to determine whether their responses were different. Male scores were also compared to female scores to determine if the responses differed by gender.FindingsThere was widespread approval for tax evasion on ethical grounds, although some arguments to support tax evasion were stronger than others. Males and females were equally opposed to tax evasion. Business and economics students were more favorably disposed to tax evasion than were law and philosophy students.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample was limited to students in just three majors in one Chinese city. Sampling students in other majors and in other Chinese cities might have yielded different results. Sampling Chinese business people, Chinese lawyers and accountants might have also yielded different results. No comparison based on age was made because the sample consisted of people from the same age group. Choosing a sample consisting of different ages might have revealed differences in opinion based on age.Practical implicationsIf the government of China wants to reduce the extent of tax evasion, the first step is to determine why people evade taxes. The second step is to take measures to remove the reasons why people evade taxes. The present study ranks the reasons why people think tax evasion is morally acceptable. Corruption, waste and unfairness were the three strongest reasons for justifying tax evasion. Thus, three things government can do to reduce the extent of tax evasion is to become less corrupt, less wasteful and less unfair. This study has widespread implications for other countries, since the same arguments have been used in the literature for the past 500 years to justify tax evasion. The findings for China might be applied to any number of other countries.Originality/valueThis paper is the first to rank the reasons that have traditionally been given to justify tax evasion for a city in central China and it is one of only a few to rank reasons justifying tax evasion for any country.

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: An Empirical Study of Opinion in Kazakhstan

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: An Empirical Study of Opinion in Kazakhstan

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: A Comparative Study of Bosnian and Romanian Opinion

This paper compares the views of Bosnian and Romanian business students on the ethics of tax evasion. Wilcoxon tests found that their views were significantly different for 12 of the 18 fact situations examined.

An Empirical Study of Attitudes Toward the Ethics of Tax Evasion in Mali

Most studies on tax evasion have taken either an economics or public finance perspective. Not many studies have investigated tax evasion from the perspective of ethics. One exception is a 1944 doctoral dissertation by Martin Crowe (1944), a Catholic priest who examined the Christian (mostly Catholic) theological and philosophical literature of the past 500 years. His study identified a number of arguments that have been used to justify tax evasion over the centuries. The present study used a survey instrument that includes 15 of those historical arguments, plus 3 newer arguments, and distributed it to a group of Executive MBA students in Mali, a country in West Africa to determine the extent of support for the various arguments that have been made over the past 500 years using a seven-point Likert scale. The arguments are then ranked from strongest to weakest. This study replicates the studies listed in the references section.

An Empirical Study of Tax Evasion Ethics in China

An Empirical Study of Tax Evasion Ethics in China

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: A Comparative Study of Guangzhou (Southern China) and Macau Opinion

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: A Comparative Study of Guangzhou (Southern China) and Macau Opinion

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: An Empirical Study of Dominican Republic Opinion

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: An Empirical Study of Dominican Republic Opinion

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: A Survey of Hispanic Opinion

In 1944, Martin Crowe, a Catholic priest, wrote a doctoral dissertation titled Moral Obligation of Paying Just Taxes. His dissertation summarized and analyzed 500 years of theological and philosophical debate on this topic, which identified three basic philosophical positions on the issue (tax evasion is always unethical, sometimes unethical or never unethical). Since Crowe's dissertation, not much has been written on the topic of tax evasion from an ethical or religious perspective. 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 319 business students at a university in the South Texas area. The 18 arguments were ranked in terms of strength, from strongest to weakest. Comparisons were also made according to gender, age, student status, residence, major, ethnicity and religion to determine if the viewpoints for these demographics were significantly different.

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

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.

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: A Comparative Study of Taiwan and the USA

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: A Comparative Study of Taiwan and the USA

A Comparative Study on Perceived Ethics of Tax Evasion: Hong Kong Vs the United States

This article begins with a review of the literature on the ethics of tax evasion and identifies the three main views that have emerged over the centuries, namely always ethical, sometimes ethical, and never or almost never ethical. It then reports on the results of a survey of HK and U.S. university business students who were asked to express their opinions on the 15 statements covering the three main views. The data are then analyzed to determine which of the three viewpoints is dominant among the sample population. Although it was found that HK scores were significantly different from the U.S. scores, both HK and U.S. respondents were opposed to the view that tax evasion is always or almost always ethical. The strongest arguments justifying tax evasion were in cases where the government was corrupt, the tax system was unfair and unaffordable. The weakest arguments for justifying tax evasion were in cases where there was a selfish motive. The underlying cultural differences are further explored in hope of accounting for differing perceptions of ethics of tax evasion. Policy implications for increasing people’s awareness of ethics on tax evasion are also highlighted.

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: A Comparative Study of Australian, New Zealand and U.S.A. Opinion

The findings of this study show that tax evasion is considered to never be justifiable by the majority of people in each country. But the data also show that a large minority in each country consider tax evasion to be justifiable in some cases. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 = never justifiable and 10 = always justifiable, 60 percent or more of the people sampled in each country thought that tax evasion was never justifiable. Phrased differently, about 38 to 40 percent thought tax evasion was justifiable in certain circumstances. Overall mean scores for Australia, New Zealand and the United States were 2.16, 2.30 and 2.28, respectively. Wilcoxon tests found that there was no significant difference overall for Australia, New Zealand or the United States. There were also no significant differences betweenthe male scores (2.43, 2.64 and 2.54), meaning that the men of Australia, New Zealand and the United States all had the same opinion about the justifiability of tax evasion. There were no significant differences between the female scores (1.89, 2.03 and 2.01) either, but the differences between the male and female scores were all significant at the 1 percent level. Women in each country were significantly more opposed to tax evasion than were men for the same country. This paper uses the data gathered as part of a much larger study on human beliefs and values and compares the views of 2039 Australians, 1155 New Zealanders and 1198 Americans on the ethics of tax evasion. Comparisons are made for general viewpoints as well as by gender, age and level of education to determine if there were any significant differences.

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: A Survey of Australian Opinion

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: A Survey of Australian Opinion

Changing Attitudes Toward the Ethics of Tax Evasion: An Empirical Study of 10 Transition Economies

This paper analyzes the data on tax evasion that was collected over two different periods for ten transition economies. Comparisons are made between the earlier and later data to determine whether attitudes toward tax evasion have changed over time. The study found that some countries became significantly more tolerant of tax evasion over time while other countries became less tolerant of tax evasion. There was no significant difference between earlier and later attitudes toward tax evasion for two countries.

Tax Evasion and Ethics: A Comparative Study of the USA and Four Latin American Countries

The authors distributed a survey instrument to university students in Colombia, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the United States to determine their views on the ethics of tax evasion. Participants were asked to indicate the extent of their agreement or disagreement with each statement that has been used to justify tax evasion, using a 7-point Likert scale. Arguments were then ranked from strongest to weakest. Several comparisons were made to determine if the attitude toward tax evasion differed by country, culture or gender.

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: Two Empirical Studies of Puerto Rican Opinion

In 1944, Martin Crowe, a Catholic priest, wrote a doctoral dissertation titled Moral Obligation of Paying Just Taxes. His dissertation summarized and analyzed 500 years of theological and philosophical debate on this topic, which identified three basic philosophical positions on the issue. Since Crowe's dissertation, not much has been written on the topic of tax evasion from an ethical perspective. The present paper consists of two empirical studies. The goal of the first study 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 students at a university in Puerto Rico. The 18 arguments were ranked in terms of strength, from strongest to weakest. Comparisons were also made between male and female responses and between accounting student and law student responses. The second study analyzes some empirical data from a much larger study of human beliefs and values. Data for that study were gathered by face-to-face interviews. The questions and methodologies were different and the results of the two studies are not strictly comparable. However, a comparison of the two studies does provide a more complete view of Puerto Rican opinion regarding the ethics of tax evasion.

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: An Empirical Study of Ecuador

Although much research has been done on tax evasion from the perspectives of economics and public finance, not much has been done from the perspective of ethics. This paper is intended to partially fill that gap in the literature. This paper reviews the literature that has been published on the ethics of tax evasion, then proceeds to present the results of a study conducted in Ecuador that gathered opinions of 140 respondents on the ethics of tax evasion. The authors constructed a survey instrument that contained 18 statements representing the major arguments that have been made over the last 500 years to justify tax evasion. Respondents were asked to indicate the extent of their agreement or disagreement with each statement by placing a number from 1 to 7 in the space provided. Arguments were then ranked from strongest to weakest. Scores were also compared by gender. An analysis of the data found that there was no significant difference between male and female scores, a finding that corresponds to the findings of some similar studies but that differs from the findings of other studies. The strongest arguments to justify tax evasion were in cases where the government was excessively corrupt, where tax money was wasted or where the system was perceived to be unfair. This finding has policy implications. If governments want to reduce the amount of tax evasion, they need to reduce the amount of government corruption, spend tax money wisely and adopt tax policies that are viewed as fair.

Ethics, Tax Evasion and Gender: Empirical Studies of Opinion in Utah and 14 Countries in the Western Hemisphere

A number of recent studies have examined the ethics of tax evasion. However, very little research has been done to examine the relationship between age and views on tax evasion. The present paper is intended to partially fill that gap. First the authors distributed a survey soliciting the views on tax evasion to 638 students at a large college in the western United States. Eighteen arguments justifying tax evasion were ranked in terms of strength, from strongest to weakest. Comparisons were also made to determine whether responses varied by age. The authors then examined data on age and tax evasion that was collected as part of a much larger study of human beliefs and values to determine whether views on the ethics of tax evasion change with age.

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: Case Studies of Taiwan

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: Case Studies of Taiwan

The Ethics of Tax Evasion: An Empirical Study of French EMBA Students

Most studies on tax evasion have taken either an economics or public finance perspective. Not many studies have investigated tax evasion from the perspective of ethics. One exception is a 1944 doctoral dissertation by Martin Crowe, a Catholic priest who examined the Christian (mostly Catholic) theological and philosophical literature of the past 500 years. His study identified a number of arguments that have been used to justify tax evasion over the centuries. The present study constructed a survey instrument that includes 15 of those historical arguments, plus 3 newer arguments, and distributed it to a group of French EMBA students to determine the extent of support for the various arguments that exists in France today using a seven-point Likert scale. The arguments are then ranked from strongest to weakest. Male and female scores are also compared to determine if there is a significant difference in response based on gender.