Steuerhinterziehung: Einige romantische, realistische und nicht zuletzt empirische Befunde

The decision to evade taxes is based, according to the economic viewpoint, on a utility maximizing calculus. As for the determinants of tax evasion, empirical investigations suggest that the impact of those factors which neoclassical theory considers crucial is very small: Controls and penalties work at best as a weak deterrent, and increasing marginal tax burden causes even more, and not, as standard theory would have predicted, less tax evasion. The empirical results are, however, compatible with a broader viewpoint relating tax evasion to taxpayers’ attitude towards the state with respect to the degree of participation granted to its citizen