Tax Compliance in Slovenia: An Empirical Assessment of Tax Knowledge and Fairness Perception

Abstract

Complex tax systems can result in tax evasion, which further impacts the revenues necessary to achieve sustainable development goals. Enhancing taxpayer education, tax knowledge, and tax fairness perception is essential for boosting revenues to support societal sustainability. The aim of this study was to assess the levels of tax knowledge and tax fairness perception within the Slovene taxpayer population, with a specific focus on the differences related to gender and settlement size. Further, the connections between tax knowledge and various aspects of tax fairness were explored. The Kruskal–Wallis test was used to assess the statistical significance of gender and settlement size differences and the Kendall’s coefficient of rank to determine the association between the tax knowledge and fairness perception dimensions. The results provide evidence that highlights disparities in tax knowledge between male and female taxpayers (p-value = 0.0116). Additionally, this study demonstrates that settlement size does not significantly impact tax knowledge perception among Slovene taxpayers (p-value = 0.2067). However, tax fairness encompasses various dimensions, and our research reveals no disparities based on gender (p-value = 0.7263) or settlement size (p-value = 0.2786). When assessing the correlation between tax knowledge and tax fairness perception, the results indicate statistically significant but weak correlations in both directions, depending on the specific fairness dimension.