IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jku/econwp/2001_04.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Tax avoidance, tax evasion, and tax flight: Do legal differences matter?

Author

Listed:

Abstract

Although from an economic point of view, legal considerations apart, tax avoidance, tax evasion and tax flight have similar effects, namely a reduction of revenue yields, and are based on the same desire to reduce the tax burden, it is likely that individuals perceive them as different and as unequally fair. Overall, 252 fiscal officers, business students, business lawyers, and entrepreneurs produced spontaneous associations to a scenario either describing tax avoidance, tax evasion, or tax flight, and evaluated it as positive, neutral or negative. The results indicate that social representations differ with respect to tax avoidance, tax evasion, and tax flight. Tax evasion was perceived rather negatively, tax flight neutrally, and tax avoidance positively. Tax knowledge was found not to be correlated neither with tax avoidance nor with tax evasion.

Suggested Citation

  • Friedrich Schneider & Erich Kirchler & Boris Maciejovsky, 2001. "Tax avoidance, tax evasion, and tax flight: Do legal differences matter?," Economics working papers 2001-04, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    • Handle: RePEc:jku:econwp:2001_04
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.jku.at/papers/2001/wp0104.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cullis, John G. & Lewis, Alan, 1997. "Why people pay taxes: From a conventional economic model to a model of social convention," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 18(2-3), pages 305-321, April.
    2. James Alm & Gary H. McClelland & William D. Schulze, 1999. "Changing the Social Norm of Tax Compliance by Voting," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(2), pages 141-171, May.
    3. Chang, Otto H. & Nichols, Donald R. & Schultz, Joseph J., 1987. "Taxpayer attitudes toward tax audit risk," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 299-309, September.
    4. Luigi Bosco & Luigi Mittone, 1997. "Tax Evasion and Moral Constraints: some Experimental Evidence," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(3), pages 297-324, August.
    5. Schepanski, A. & Shearer, T., 1995. "A Prospect Theory Account of the Income Tax Withholding Phenomenon," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 174-186, August.
    6. Dornstein, Miriam, 1987. "Taxes: Attitudes and perceptions and their social bases," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 55-76, March.
    7. Robben, Henry S. J. & Webley, Paul & Elffers, Henk & Hessing, Dick J., 1990. "Decision frames, opportunity and tax evasion : An experimental approach," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 353-361, December.
    8. Eriksen, Knut & Fallan, Lars, 1996. "Tax knowledge and attitudes towards taxation; A report on a quasi-experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 387-402, June.
    9. Slemrod, Joel & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 2002. "Tax avoidance, evasion, and administration," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 22, pages 1423-1470, Elsevier.
    10. Clotfelter, Charles T, 1983. "Tax Evasion and Tax Rates: An Analysis of Individual Returns," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 65(3), pages 363-373, August.
    11. Weigel, Russell H. & Hessing, Dick J. & Elffers, Henk, 1987. "Tax evasion research: A critical appraisal and theoretical model," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 215-235, June.
    12. Porcano, Thomas M., 1988. "Correlates of tax evasion," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 47-67, March.
    13. Kirchler, Erich, 1999. "Reactance to taxation: Employers' attitudes towards taxes," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 131-138, July.
    14. Baldry, Jonathan C, 1987. "Income Tax Evasion and the Tax Schedule: Some Experimental Results," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 42(3), pages 357-383.
    15. Wallschutzky, I. G., 1984. "Possible causes of tax evasion," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 371-384, December.
    16. Allingham, Michael G. & Sandmo, Agnar, 1972. "Income tax evasion: a theoretical analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(3-4), pages 323-338, November.
    17. Spicer, M W & Lundstedt, S B, 1976. "Understanding Tax Evasion," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 31(2), pages 295-305.
    18. repec:bla:kyklos:v:52:y:1999:i:2:p:141-71 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Groenland, Edward A. G. & van Veldhoven, Gery M., 1983. "Tax evasion behavior: A psychological framework," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 129-144, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aleksandar Stulhofer & Ivan Rimac, 2002. "Opportunism, Institutions and Moral Costs: the Socio-Cultural Dimension of the Underground Economy in Croatia 1995-1999," Occasional paper series 14, Institute of Public Finance.
    2. Friedrich Schneider, 2012. "The Shadow Economy and Tax Evasion: What Do We (Not) Know?," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 13(2), pages 03-12, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kirchler, Erich & Maciejovsky, Boris & Schneider, Friedrich, 2003. "Everyday representations of tax avoidance, tax evasion, and tax flight: Do legal differences matter?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 535-553, August.
    2. Erich Kirchler & Boris Maciejovsky, "undated". "Steuermoral und Steuerhinterziehung," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2002-18, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group.
    3. Kirchler, Erich & Hoelzl, Erik & Wahl, Ingrid, 2008. "Enforced versus voluntary tax compliance: The "slippery slope" framework," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 210-225, April.
    4. James, Simon & Edwards, Alison, 2010. "An annotated bibliography of tax compliance and tax compliance costs," MPRA Paper 26106, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Wenzel, Michael, 2004. "An analysis of norm processes in tax compliance," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 213-228, April.
    6. Semjén, András, 2017. "Az adózói magatartás különféle magyarázatai [Various explanations for tax compliance]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(2), pages 140-184.
    7. Çule, Monika & Fulton, Murray, 2009. "Business culture and tax evasion: Why corruption and the unofficial economy can persist," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(3), pages 811-822, December.
    8. Vossler, Christian A. & McKee, Michael & Bruner, David M., 2021. "Behavioral effects of tax withholding on tax compliance: Implications for information initiatives," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 301-319.
    9. Verboon, Peter & van Dijke, Marius, 2007. "A self-interest analysis of justice and tax compliance: How distributive justice moderates the effect of outcome favorability," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 704-727, December.
    10. Jeffrey Cohen & Gil Manzon & Valentina Zamora, 2015. "Contextual and Individual Dimensions of Taxpayer Decision Making," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 126(4), pages 631-647, February.
    11. Colin C. Williams, 2014. "Confronting the Shadow Economy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 15370.
    12. Iswahyudi, Heru, 2018. "Economic Consequences of Tax Non-Compliance: Evidence From Indonesia," MPRA Paper 122337, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. James Alm & Matthias Kasper, 2020. "Laboratory Experiments," Working Papers 2008, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    14. Kirchler, Erich & Niemirowski, Apolonia & Wearing, Alexander, 2006. "Shared subjective views, intent to cooperate and tax compliance: Similarities between Australian taxpayers and tax officers," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 502-517, August.
    15. Lars P. Feld & Bruno S. Frey, 2006. "Tax Compliance as the Result of a Psychological Tax Contract: The Role of Incentives and Responsive Regulation," CREMA Working Paper Series 2006-10, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    16. Ashby, Julie S. & Webley, Paul & Haslam, Alexander S., 2009. "The role of occupational taxpaying cultures in taxpaying behaviour and attitudes," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 216-227, April.
    17. Colin C. Williams & Friedrich Schneider, 2016. "Measuring the Global Shadow Economy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 16551.
    18. Erich Kirchler & Stephan Muehlbacher & Barbara Kastlunger & Ingrid Wahl, 2007. "Why Pay Taxes? A Review of Tax Compliance Decisions," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper0730, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    19. Benno Torgler, 2003. "Beyond Punishment: a tax compliance experiment with taxpayers in Costa Rica," Revista de Analisis Economico – Economic Analysis Review, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business, vol. 18(1), pages 27-56, June.
    20. Martin Halla & Friedrich G. Schneider, 2005. "Taxes and Benefits: Two Distinct Options to Cheat on the State?," Economics working papers 2005-05, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    tax evasion; social representations; tax knowledge;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
    • K34 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Tax Law
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jku:econwp:2001_04. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: René Böheim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vlinzat.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.