Abstract
This study examines how the perceptions of fairness in tax regimes influence tax morale. We empirically demonstrate the importance of the perception of fairness in shaping tax morale and the subsequent attitudes by examining data on approximately 7300 taxpayers by the National Survey of Tax and Benefit of South Korea. To estimate the tax moral inherent in taxpayers, we adopt the framed and hypothetical tax evasion question method. We find that taxpayers are more likely to pay taxes if they perceive the tax system as fair in terms of vertical, horizontal, exchange, and distributive fairness, while procedural fairness is not statistically significant. Our results also indicate that the peer effect and trust in government have an essential positive correlation with tax morale.
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Notes
For a more detailed explanation, the tteokbokki (spicy stir-fried rice cakes) is one of the most popular Korean street foods; tteokbokki shops are common in Korea and can be found nearly everywhere. After deducting a series of expenses—such as rental fees, labor, and material costs—80 million South Korean won (approximately 73,000 dollars) is an ordinary sales figure in South Korea in 2016.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable remarks. The datasets generated during the current study are available in the National Survey of Tax and Benefit repository, https://www.kipf.re.kr/panel/.
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Kim, Y., Wan, H. The effect of fairness on tax morale in South Korea: a framed question approach. Int Rev Econ 69, 103–123 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12232-022-00387-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12232-022-00387-3