Social dimensions of tax evasion: Trust and tax morale in contemporary Spain | Dimensiones sociales del fraude fiscal: confianza y moral fiscal en la España contemporánea

Abstract

This article tackles the problem of tax evasion from a sociological view. The rational action approach is integrated here with the concepts of trust and tax morale. The aim is to discover why people justify fiscal fraud or have lax tax morale. The main hypothesis maintained here is that tax system social factors -such as trust- have an effect on the justification of fraud. Using two survey datasets referred to the past ten years, we observe that tax morale seems to be mainly composed by trust in tax system, trust in other taxpayers as well as diverse contextual factors. Finally, I present an interpretive framework that takes into consideration individual factors as well as social and geographic dimensions of tax evasion in Spain.