Assessing Tax Compliance Behavior Among Romanian Taxpayers: An Empirical Case Study

Abstract

This study explores how different factors affect tax compliance behavior among Romanian individual taxpayers. By unpacking tax compliance into nine drivers—tax system fairness, trust in government and tax authorities, efficiency, and transparency of government spending, knowledge of tax legislation, tax legislation simplicity, personal financial constraints, personal ethics, and moral standards, the social environment, and coercive measures—this study develops clear-cut paths of the drivers of tax compliance from the perspective of a developing country. The proposed research hypotheses were tested with a sample of 402 individual taxpayers and quantitative data analysis was carried out using partial least squares-structural equation modeling. The results showed that seven drivers (tax system fairness, trust in government and tax authorities, knowledge of tax legislation, personal financial constraints, coercive measures, moral standards, and tax legislation simplicity) were significant factors that increase the likelihood of tax compliance among individual taxpayers. Our findings are expected to provide tax authorities and governments new insights on tax compliance behavior that enable them to develop fiscal methods, strategies, policies, and legal measures tailored to local context, and constraints.