An Experimental Study on the Effect of Taxation Unfairness Perception on Tax Compliance
Asian Tax Journal Vol. 9 No. 1 (2008), pp. 125-144
Abstract
In this paper we conducted an experiment to examine whether taxpayer's tax reporting is affected by his perception about taxation unfairness. We hypothesized that taxpayer who perceived horizontal taxation unfairness reports less income relative to others with equal income who perceive taxation fairness. And we hypothesized that taxpayer's tax reporting decision is affected by tax rate, perception of taxation unfairness, and taxation unfairness perception by tax rate interaction effect. Seventy－two college students who are income tax taxpayer at present time participated in two of four experimental group. The experiment participants were paid experiment currency amounted 20,000 won at the beginning of the experiment. Each of two experimental periods began with experiment participants reading their information. In the taxation fairness settings this information included the tax rate(20% or 40%) for that period and audit probability(25%), the penalty amounts equal to 100 percent of the tax evaded. But in the taxation unfairness settings this information included the tax rate (20% or 40%) for that period as well as the tax rate (10% or 20%) of some other hypothetical taxpayers. Our experimental evidence are as follows. First, the experiment participants in taxation unfairness condition reported significantly less income comparative to experiment participants in taxation fairness condition at two tax rate settings and significance was higher at 40% tax rate settings. Thus we concluded that experiment participants' perception of taxation unfairness resulted tax incompliance. Second, there was no difference in tax report amount between the experiment participants in 20% tax rate setting and in 40% tax rate setting. Third, the experiment participant's taxreporting level was affected by the participant's perception of taxation unfairness, but was not affected by the tax rate, the taxation unfairness perception by the tax rate interaction effect.
Keywords
- taxation unfairness
- tax incompliance
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