Social Dimensions of Tax Evasion: Trust and Tax Morale in Contemporary Spain

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 fi scal
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
justifi cation 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.