Tax compliance in a social setting: The influence of social norms,trust in government,and perceived fairness on taxpayer compliance

Voluntary tax compliance is important for governments around the world as they try to manage budget deficits. Traditional methods to improve tax compliance, such as increased audits, can be costly to implement. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence that social factors have on individuals' tax compliance intentions. Results of a survey of 217 U.S. taxpayers found support for the influence of social factors on tax compliance. This research concludes that social norms influence compliance intentions indirectly through internalization as personal norms. Specifically, as the strength of social norms in favor of tax compliance increases, personal norms of tax compliance also increase, and this leads to a subsequent increase in compliance intentions. We also conclude that trust in government has a significant influence on both perceived fairness of the tax system and compliance decisions. This study adds to current tax research in two important ways. First, the results suggest that the influence of social norms on tax compliance is largely through internalization as personal norms. Second, to the best of our knowledge this is also the first tax compliance study in which perception of fairness is modeled as a function of trust rather than vice-versa. This research may help taxing authorities develop less costly and more effective strategies for increasing taxpayer compliance.     

Relationship between tax compliance internationally and selected determinants of tax morale

Tax compliance has been studied by analyzing the individual decision of a representative person between planning and evading taxes. A neglected aspect of tax compliance is the impact of a social contract on tax morale. Such implicit contract between the individual and the state guaranteeing a high level of economic freedom, effective competition laws, an important equity market and high moral norms, is hypothesized to have a positive impact on tax compliance. In this paper, empirical evidence based on data from 30 countries indicate that tax compliance internationally is positively related to the level of economic freedom, the level of importance of the equity market and the effectiveness of competition laws and high moral norms.     

Tax enforcement and tax havens under formula apportionment

In this paper, we consider optimal tax enforcement policy in the presence of profit shifting toward tax havens. We show that, under separate accounting, tax enforcement levels may be too high due to negative fiscal externalities. In contrast, under formula apportionment, tax enforcement is likely to be too low due to positive externalities of tax enforcement. Our results challenge recent contributions arguing that, under formula apportionment, there is a tendency toward inefficiently high levels of (effective) tax rates.     

Cost Uncertainty and Taxpayer Compliance

The existence of a private cost borne by audited taxpayers affects the tax enforcement policy. This is so because tax auditors will face now two sources of uncertainty, namely, the typical one associated with taxpayers’ income and that associated with the taxpayers’ idiosyncratic attitude towards tax compliance. Moreover, the inspection policy can be exposed to some randomness from the taxpayers’ viewpoint due to the uncertainty about the audit cost borne by the tax authority. In this paper we provide an unified framework to analyze the effects of all these sources of uncertainty in a model of tax compliance with strategic interaction between auditors and taxpayers. We show that more variance in the distribution of the taxpayers’ private cost of evading raises both tax compliance and the ex-ante welfare of taxpayers. The effects of the uncertainty about the audit cost faced by the tax authority are generally ambiguous. We also discuss the implications of our model for the regressive (or progressive) bias of the effective tax system.     

纳税人税收遵从行为博弈分析

创建基于行为博弈的税收遵从均衡模型,将处于相同税收境况的纳税人视为一个群体,则个体纳税人选择税收遵从策略从纳税人群体角度来看就是以一定的概率选择该种策略。面对正常税务检查与严格税务检查并存的环境,纳税人税收遵从博弈稳定均衡策略形成不但取决于税制的特性,而且依赖于其他纳税人的税收遵从决策。依据税收遵从博弈均衡的形成机理,提出建立我国税收遵从激励监督机制的对策。     

Corporate income taxation in Lithuania in the context of the EU

This paper explores Lithuania's competitiveness in the area of corporate income taxation. In order to assess how much freedom of action the country has in designing its own corporate income tax policy, the process of EU tax harmonization is analyzed by evaluating justification for tax harmonization, the major developments and the main outcomes of this process. Lithuania's corporate income tax system is compared with the systems in the other EU countries. Following a macro backward-looking approach, the paper calculates the measures of effective profit tax burden. Effective tax burden measures are computed for the whole enlarged EU. Such calculations are still rare in the economic literature.     

税收遵从成本对纳税遵从行为的影响

税收遵从成本和征管成本一同构成税收运行成本,是税收成本的重要组成部分。但由于税收遵从成本具有非显性的特征,往往被理论界及实践部门所忽视。本文借鉴国外税收遵从成本理论,分析了税收遵从成本对纳税遵从行为的影响,提出了优化我国税收制度、降低税收遵从成本的框架性建议。     

THE COST OF RETAINED EARNINGS: A FURTHER NOTE, AN ILLUSTRATION AND A COMPUTER PROGRAM

This paper presents the personal and corporate tax adjusted version of the cost of retained earnings, with particular reference to the problem of computing the effective rate of tax on a unit of pre tax profit when one allows for the delayed incidence of part of the tax impost. The argument is illustrated numerically and supported by a computer program which enables the user to consider and work out the effect of changing one or more variables. A term which appeared in a previous article (Lister 1981) is corrected.     

Taxpayers' Behavioural Responses and Measures of Tax Compliance ‘Gaps’: A Critique and a New Measure

The work of Feldstein (1995 and 1999) has stimulated substantial conceptual and empirical advances in economists' approaches to analysing taxpayers' behavioural responses to changes in tax rates. Meanwhile, a largely independent literature proposing and applying alternative measures of tax compliance has also developed in recent years, which has sought to provide tax agencies with tools to identify the extent of tax non‐compliance as a first step to designing policies to improve compliance. In this context, measures of ‘tax gaps’ – the difference between actual tax collected and the potential tax collection under full compliance with the tax code – have become the primary measures of tax non‐compliance via (legal) avoidance and/or (illegal) evasion. In this paper, we argue that the tax gap as conventionally defined is conceptually flawed because it fails to incorporate behavioural responses by taxpayers. We show that conventional tax gap measures, which ignore the presence of behavioural responses, exaggerate the degree of non‐compliance. This potentially applies both to indirect taxes (such as the ‘VAT gap’) and direct (income) taxes. Further, where these conventional tax gap measures motivate reforms designed to increase the tax compliance rate, they will likely have a tax‐base‐reducing effect and hence generate a smaller increase in realised tax revenues than would be anticipated from the tax gap estimate.     

我国税收遵从影响因素的实证分析

通过对国内外有关税收遵从研究进行总结和评述,明确了税收遵从研究的范围、思路;基于税收遵从影响因素的理论假设,实证分析了税制、税率、信息非对称、税收征管及人们公平感觉等因素对税收遵从的影响。从我国税收遵从的现状出发,结合税收征管实践,得出影响我国税收不遵从的主要因素和税收流失规模,提出提高我国税收遵从度的对策。     

民办教育税收问题探讨

民办教育的税收待遇应综合考虑其公益性、营利性、非营利性而定。我国民办教育存在的税收问题有:民办教育与公办教育税收待遇差别较大、民办教育税收政策营利性与非营利性不分等。应从完善教育法制、对税收政策进行营利性与非营利性区分、加强教育税收管理等方面进行完善。     

国外税收遵从的实践

西方国家普遍认为税务管理的目标是规范纳税人行为,提高纳税人自觉遵从税法的程度。本文介绍了税务遵从实践中美国和澳大利亚的经验,并针对我国税务管理提出了几点建议:科学认识我国目前的征管现状,构建以提高税收遵从为导向的税务管理体系;以提高税收遵从为目标指导下一步信息化建设;提倡"合作遵从",构建和谐的征纳关系;以税收遵从为指导解决征管资源有限和经济高速发展的矛盾。     

Mapping tax compliance: Assemblages,distributed action and practices: A new way of doing tax research

Tax compliance denotes the act of reporting and paying taxes in accordance with the tax laws. Current social science scholarship on tax compliance can almost entirely be divided into behavioural psychology analyses and critical tax studies. This article, which presents two cases of how tax compliance is constructed, challenges the explanatory reaches of today's social science approaches, arguing that an alternative approach to understanding tax compliance is worthwhile exploring. This other choice of approach, inspired by actor–network theory (ANT), adopts a more practice-oriented focus that studies tax compliance where it takes place as well as what it is made of. Consequently, this article argues that tax compliance is a socio-material assemblage and that complying is a distributed action. The article concludes by highlighting how an ANT approach contributes to the further theoretical development of social science studies of taxation.     

Corporate Tax Harmonization in Europe: It's All About Compliance

Although the hope may be to reduce economic distortions in captial markets, the primary focus of corporate tax consolidation among member states of a federation is to reduce compliance and administrative burdens. For example, the Canadian provinces have sufficient flexibility to determine their corporate tax policies, and effective tax rates on captial vary considerably by province, but they still have achieved a considerable degree of harmonization of tax bases. The European Union should also try to implement a consolidated tax base for companies. A compulsory base would be best, but it is likely that the optional consolidated tax base is most practical at this time.     

The role of headquarters in multinational profit shifting strategies

This paper stresses the special role of multinational headquarters in corporate profit shifting strategies. Using a large panel of European firms, we show that multinational enterprises (MNEs) are reluctant to shift profits away from their headquarters even if these are located in high-tax countries. Thus, shifting activities in response to corporate tax rate differentials between parents and subsidiaries are found to be significantly larger if the parent has a lower corporate tax rate than its subsidiary and profit is thus shifted towards the headquarter firm. This result is in line with recent empirical evidence which suggests that MNEs bias the location of profits and highly profitable assets in favor of the headquarter location.     

国有及国有控股企业“利挤税”的财务分析

国有及国有控股企业经营盈利时总想少上缴给国家财政,而出现亏损时总能得到国家财政补贴。本文分析了我国国有及国有控股企业“利挤税”式的税收不遵从的内生机制,并通过利润分配、利润弥补亏损、存货计价和固定资产核算的会计处理来实现。只有通过体制改革使我国经济社会发展中不需要存在的国有及国有控股企业民营化、需要存在的国有及国有控股企业财政化,才能消除“利挤税”分配机制。     

Introducing an IP license box in Switzerland: quantifying the effects

In response to mounting international pressure to reform the ring-fenced elements of its tax system, the Swiss government has put forward a comprehensive tax reform package. The proposal comprises the introduction of a license box, a substantial reduction in cantonal profit tax rates, and an allowance for excess corporate equity. We apply a computable general equilibrium model to quantify the economic effects of this reform. Our results reveal that the license box, combined with the reduction in the cantonal profit taxes, limits the outflow of the tax base of those companies that benefit from the current preferential tax treatment. The reduction in cantonal profit taxes and the fact that regularly taxed companies additionally benefit from the license box render the reform package costly, such that tax revenues might well decline after the reform.     

影响纳税人税收遵从决策的因素

税收遵从决策是纳税人行为选择的一个复杂过程,其中起作用的因素很多,除了经济因素,还包括非经济因素。按照经典的逃税模型——A-S模型①所揭示的主要因素是稽查概率和罚款率,除此之外影响纳税人遵从决策的因素还包括:税收遵从成本、税制、纳税人个体特征、对政府的满意程度以及税收文化等。     

医疗机构课税制度改革的几个问题

我国自2000年开始实施医疗机构分类管理制度以来,分别适用于营利性医疗机构与非营利性医疗机构的课税规则也随之相应形成,造成两者差异巨大的税收负担。差异性的税负也成为进一步加剧两者不平等的市场竞争地位的重要因素,阻碍营利性医疗机构的发展。本文从分析现行医疗机构课税制度的现状入手,分析医疗机构承担各个税种纳税义务的主体资格,并以此为基础,对完善医疗机构课税制度提出若干建议。     

Earnings management and deferred tax

This study analyses the deferred tax provisions of firms during a period in which the firms' incentive to manage earnings may have been be particularly strong and in which firms made disclosures in relation to partial deferred tax provisions which revealed readily their under- or over-provision of deferred tax. Using a sample of 58 firms for the two years 1991 and 1992, the magnitude of the under- or over-provisions found is economically significant, amounting, on average, to around 20% of the maximum potential deferred tax liability and, more important, 9% of profit or loss before tax. This paper takes such under- and over-provision of deferred tax and investigates its relationship with a number of posited explanatory variables - as derived and developed from the earnings management literature. In a multivariate setting it is found that the level of under-/over-provision is related to the following characteristics: whether the firm is reporting a pre-tax loss or a pre-tax profit; the extent of adjustment to prior year tax; and the level of surplus advance corporation tax (ACT). These findings support a general profit- smoothing hypothesis, and the finding in relation to ACT suggests that firms take an overall view in determining the required level of provision in order to manage earnings, rather than concentrating upon particular line items. There is also weaker evidence of a relationship between the level of under-/over-provision and firms' levels of gearing and effective tax rates.