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Happiness and tax morale: An empirical analysis

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  • Lubian, Diego
  • Zarri, Luca

Abstract

This paper presents empirical evidence that “tax morale” – taxpayers’ intrinsic motivation to pay taxes – constitutes a new determinant of happiness, even after controlling for several demographic and socioeconomic factors. Using data on Italian households for 2004, we assess the strength of tax morale by relying on single items as well as composite multi-item indices. Our main result that fiscal honesty generates a higher hedonic payoff than cheating is in line with Harbaugh et al. (2007)’s neuroeconomic finding. Further, it sheds light on the well-known “puzzle of compliance”, that is the fact that many individuals pay taxes even when expected penalty and audit probability are extremely low: tax compliance is less puzzling once we show that not only it is materially costly, but also provides sizeable non-pecuniary benefits that make it rewarding in itself.

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Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

Volume (Year): 80 (2011)
Issue (Month): 1 ()
Pages: 223-243

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Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:80:y:2011:i:1:p:223-243

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Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo

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Keywords: Happiness; Tax morale; Tax compliance;

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Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Paying tax makes you happy
    by Nicholas Gruen in Club Troppo on 2011-04-12 13:17:51
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Cited by:
  1. Akay, Alpaslan & Bargain, Olivier & Dolls, Mathias & Neumann, Dirk & Peichl, Andreas & Siegloch, Sebastian, 2012. "Happy Taxpayers? Income Taxation and Well-Being," IZA Discussion Papers 6999, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  2. Philipp Doerrenberg & Denvil Duncan & Clemens Fuest & Andreas Peichl, 2012. "Nice guys finish last: are people with higher tax morale taxed more heavily?," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 03-02, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.

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