The Ethics of Tax Evasion: A Survey of Hispanic Opinion

33 Pages Posted: 30 Jun 2007

See all articles by Robert W. McGee

Robert W. McGee

Fayetteville State University - Department of Accounting

Arsen Djatej

Texas A&M International University

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: July 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 (tax evasion is always unethical, sometimes unethical or never unethical). 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 319 business students at a university in the South Texas area. The 18 arguments were ranked in terms of strength, from strongest to weakest. Comparisons were also made according to gender, age, student status, residence, major, ethnicity and religion to determine if the viewpoints for these demographics were significantly different.

Keywords: ethics, tax evasion, Hispanic,gender, age, student status, residence, major, ethnicity, religion

JEL Classification: D6,E62,H26,J16,J15,J14,J1,K34,K42,M14,M4,O51,O54

Suggested Citation

McGee, Robert W. and Djatej, Arsen, The Ethics of Tax Evasion: A Survey of Hispanic Opinion (July 2007). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=997541 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.997541

Robert W. McGee (Contact Author)

Fayetteville State University - Department of Accounting ( email )

Fayetteville, NC 28301
United States

HOME PAGE: http://robertwmcgee.com

Arsen Djatej

Texas A&M International University ( email )

Laredo, TX 78041
United States

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