The effect of religiosity on tax fraud acceptability : A cross-national analysis

Religion provides an important basis for social integration and the prevention of deviant behavior, such as tax fraud, a crime that costs society billions of dollars in lost revenue. The literature on tax fraud and tax fraud acceptability (TFA) has neglected religiosity as a social bond that may deter this type of behavior. Furthermore, existing work is based on the United States; there are no systematic cross-national studies. In particular, there is no research exploring the “moral communities” hypothesis that religiosity’s effect on deviance will vary according to the strength of national moral communities. The present study addresses these two gaps in the literature by analyzing data on 45,728 individuals in 36 nations from the World Values Surveys. We control for other predictors of TFA, including social bonds, economic strain, and demographic factors. The results determined that the higher the individual’s level of religiosity, the lower the TFA. Results on the moral community’s hypothesis were mixed. However, in a separate analysis of individual nations, the presence of a “moral community” (majority of the population identifies with a religious group) explained 39 percent of the variation in the presence or absence of the expected religiosity-TFA relationship. Furthermore, the presence of a communist regime in a nation, often known for the oppression of religious groups who then may view the regime as illegitimate, diminished the impact of religion on TFA. One consequence of high levels of religiosity in society can be low rates of deviant behavior, including tax fraud. The significance of tax fraud can be assessed in its economic impact on government. It has become increasingly clear that the capacity of governments to raise revenue is substantially affected by tax evasion (e.g., Hessing et al. 1992:405‐06). For example, 7.5 percent of Britain’s gross national product escapes taxation while 17 percent of the taxable income in Belgium remains undeclared. In the United States, the amount of tax revenue lost to tax cheating is approximately 20 percent (Grasmick, Bursik, and Cochran 1991:255). A review of 18 studies found that, on average, 20 percent of the population of taxpayers acknowledges cheating on their income taxes. This may be an underestimate because IRS data sometimes report that 35 percent of the returns that they audit are marked by cheating (Hessing, Effers, and Weigel 1988). Hence, tax fraud is a crime with substantial economic consequences involving billions of dollars in lost revenue. This amount dwarfs the profits made in all robberies, larcenies, burglaries, and a host of other street crimes against property (e.g., Brown, Esbensen, and Geis 2001). In short, if the proportion of persons who cheat on their income taxes increases, tax revenues will fall, with economic consequences. Religion, however, has never been applied to the problem of explaining cross-national variation in cultural attitudes toward tax fraud. This article focuses on the importance of religion in shaping cultural attitudes on the unacceptability of tax fraud. The general literature on the effects of religion on deviant attitudes/behavior is consistent. The vast majority of papers have found an inverse association—the greater the individual-level religiosity, the lower the risk of deviant behavior (see Agnew 1998; Baier and Wright 2001; Tittle and Welch 1983). A recent meta-analysis of 60 studies determined that the mean reported effect size was r =− 0.12, indicating the greater the religiosity the less likely people are to