Attitudes toward paying taxes in the USA: An empirical analysis

Abstract

People mostly pay their taxes although there is a low probability of getting caught and being penalized. Thus, new attempts in the tax compliance literature try to go beyond standard economic theory. This chapter examines citizens' attitudes toward paying taxes-what is sometimes termed their tax morale, or the intrinsic motivation to pay taxes. Tax morale may be a key determinant to explain why people are honest. However, there are not many papers that explore the concept of tax morale theoretically and empirically. This study, based on the World Values Survey, therefore attempts to fill this gap in the literature, focusing on tax morale in the USA. Societal variables, such as trust or pride, have been identified as key determinants that shape tax morale in the USA. The results also show an increase of tax morale between 1982 and 1995.