18PERSONAL TAX COMPLIANCE
Ethical decision making in the tax context
Introduction
According to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Herman Wouk, income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. If there is even the slightest bit of truth to this statement, tax authorities should be concerned. A tax return is a reporting document filed with a tax authority, and is the primary mechanism by which a tax authority learns the amounts, nature, and sources of taxpayers’ income.
Tax authorities can deter taxpayers from being noncompliant by levying interest and penalties on unpaid tax amounts. Research on taxpayers’ compliance tends to be behavioral, as it tends to be rooted in the ...
