GENDER AND ATTITUDE TOWARD THE ETHICS OF TAX EVASION: A COMPARISON OF EUROPEAN AND ASIAN VIEWS

Abstract

This study begins with an introduction to the issue of ethics and tax evasion and a review of dozens of studies that have been conducted on ethics from a gender perspective, then proceeds to present the results of a study of 23 Asian and 11 European countries on the ethics of tax evasion. The study found that, although there is widespread opposition to tax evasion, many of the more than 50,000 respondents believe that tax evasion is ethical in some cases. In most of the countries included in the study, women were significantly more opposed to tax evasion. However, in more than a dozen countries, there was no significant difference between male and female opinion. In two countries, men were significantly more opposed to tax evasion than were women.
The study also includes a bibliography of more than 80 tax evasion studies that focused on ethical issues, along with links to most of those studies.