The Ethics of Tax Evasion: A Survey of Australian Opinion

25 Pages Posted: 12 Apr 2007

See all articles by Robert W. McGee

Robert W. McGee

Fayetteville State University - Department of Accounting

Professor Sanjoy Bose

Abu Dhabi University

Date Written: April 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 plus 3 more recent arguments. A survey was constructed using a seven-point Likert scale that included all three positions and all 18 arguments and distributed to 315 business, philosophy and seminary students at several Australian universities. The 18 arguments were ranked in terms of strength, from strongest to weakest.

Comparisons were also made according to major, gender, ethnicity and religion to determine if the viewpoints for these demographics were significantly different.

Keywords: ethics, tax evasion, Australia, gender, ethnicity, religion

JEL Classification: H26, E62, D6, J16, J1, K34, K42, M14, M4, O53

Suggested Citation

McGee, Robert W. and Bose, Sanjoy, The Ethics of Tax Evasion: A Survey of Australian Opinion (April 2007). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=979410 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.979410

Robert W. McGee (Contact Author)

Fayetteville State University - Department of Accounting ( email )

Fayetteville, NC 28301
United States

HOME PAGE: http://robertwmcgee.com

Sanjoy Bose

Abu Dhabi University ( email )

P.O. Box 59911
Abu Dhabi
United Arab Emirates

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