Social norms and tax compliance

Summary While rarely examined, it is often taken for granted that social norms have a significant explanatory impact on tax evasion behavior. The first objective of the paper is to examine the relationships between predictor variables, such as the characteristics of tax systems and political processes, and social tax norms. The second objective is to analyze the relationships between social tax norms and tax evasion. The analysis is macro-oriented and the major OECD countries are treated as cases. The data on the social tax norm comes from the World Values Surveys 1981, 1990, 1995, and the International Social Survey Program surveys in 1991 and 1998. The results indicate that the general tax level has a slightly negative impact on tax norm support. However, political processes can modify, and in some cases even override, the negative influences of taxes on norm support. Assumptions that social tax norms influence the significance of tax evasion do not receive empirical support.