Tax Morale in Socio-Political Interactions: Insiders and Outsiders

This paper analyzes the importance of social and political contexts and individual value norms in tax morale. It introduces an approach to discuss tax morale with the notions of ‘insider ’ and ‘outsider ’ to capture socio-political context and personal value orientations. It constructs a general framework on tax compliance in socio-political context and analytically and statistically demonstrates the importance of identities and personal norms to explain the level of tax morale. Statistical results of an estimated logistics regression model from the World Value Survey data are generally consistent with hypothetical expectations. Results from the analysis indicate that social capital and political confidence are significant in order to estimate the level of tax morale. Moreover, individual reciprocal tendency, sensitiveness to expectations of others, collectivist orientation, and obedience tendency of authority are important determinants of tax morale