U.S., UK, Ireland and France
Introduction/Objectives
There are two prime motivations for this study of taxpayers’ perceptions of tax evasion across countries. One, there are a variety of studies on the perception of a crimes severity, but only a few consider where a person lives as a determining factor in a person’s perception; and those that study location as an independent factor have found conflicting results. If no difference is found, this study will support the series of studies that says that there is little or no difference in the perception of crimes between those that live in different environments; however, if we find that location is a factor, the results of this study will add support to the idea that a person’s environment affects their perceptions of crime. In the current study, we are using individuals from different countries. Thus, the differences are more social, economic and cultural than the size of the city or town where the person lives.
Secondly, we wanted to test whether Hofstede’s (1980) cultural framework is a good explanation of international tax compliance diversity. We would expect people in countries that are less compliant would perceive tax evasion to be less severe a crime. Using Hofstede’s cultural framework for the four countries (the US, France, Ireland, and the UK), we will determine if this framework can help predict a person’s perception of the severity of a crime. Methodology
Survey Instrument
To test a person’s perception of various crimes, a four page survey was administered. The survey took the subjects less than ten minutes to complete. The first page of the survey explained that the participant’s identity would be kept anonymous. The survey emphasized that there were no right or wrong answers. Each participant was asked to rank the perceived severity of twenty (20) different offenses on a five-point Likert scale ranging from Not Serious to Extremely Serious. The survey contained a number of different types of offenses, including white collar crimes like tax evasion and accounting fraud, violent crimes like murder and rape, and violations like ticket scalping and illegal parking. Since the terms used in different countries may differ, we customized the questionnaire by utilized the names of the same offense to fit the countries norms. For example, in some countries, ‘driving under the influence’ would be called ‘drink driving’. We also randomized the order to avoid recency effects.
Sample
We used a country tailored survey instrument with respondents from the US, France, Ireland, and the UK. The sample had a total of 334 responses which included 129 from the US; 74 from France; 48 from Ireland and 83 from the UK.