An Empirical Study of Tax Evasion Ethics in China

Andreas School of Business Working Paper Series

14 Pages Posted: 27 Sep 2007

See all articles by Robert W. McGee

Robert W. McGee

Fayetteville State University - Department of Accounting

An Yuhua

University of International Business and Economics

Date Written: September 2007

Abstract

In 1944, Martin Crowe, a Catholic priest, wrote a doctoral dissertation titled The Moral Obligation of Paying Just Taxes. His dissertation summarized and analyzed 500 years of theological and philosophical debate on this topic, which identified three basic philosophical positions on the issue. Since Crowe's dissertation, not much has been written on the topic of tax evasion from an ethical or religious perspective.

The present paper is an empirical study, the goal of which is to determine the strength of the 15 arguments justifying tax evasion that Crowe identified. A survey was constructed using a seven-point Likert scale that included all three positions and all 15 arguments and distributed to 138 business and economics students at a university in Beijing, China. The 15 arguments were ranked in terms of strength, from strongest to weakest. Comparisons were also made according to student status and gender to determine if the viewpoints for these demographics were significantly different.

Keywords: tax evasion, ethics, China, gender

JEL Classification: O12,O17,O53,H26,H23,H24,H25,J16,D31,D63,K34,K42,M4

Suggested Citation

McGee, Robert W. and Yuhua, An, An Empirical Study of Tax Evasion Ethics in China (September 2007). Andreas School of Business Working Paper Series, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1017413 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1017413

Robert W. McGee (Contact Author)

Fayetteville State University - Department of Accounting ( email )

Fayetteville, NC 28301
United States

HOME PAGE: http://robertwmcgee.com

An Yuhua

University of International Business and Economics ( email )

Beijing
China

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