Research On The Effect Of National Culture On Tax Morality

Early research on tax compliance was based on the assumption of maximizing expected utility,emphasizing the impact of tax audits and sanctions on taxpayers’ behavior.Under the existing law enforcement,the actual tax compliance level of taxpayers is higher than that calculated by the expected utility model(A-S model).Therefore,scholars tried to study tax compliance from the perspective of tax willingness or moral obligation,and named this concept tax morale.In recent years,scholars have begun to focus on the relationship between culture and economic behavior.Scholars started from the cultural factors such as social customs,habits,beliefs and values,hoping to explore their important role in economic development and individual economic behavior.According to the current study,it is generally believed that introducing culture into economic research can not only broaden the horizon of economic research,but also help to find the root cause of people’s deviation from the equilibrium strategy of maximizing utility.At present,the study of cultural impact on economy has covered many fields,such as macroeconomic development,micro-individuals and corporate behavior,including the study of cultural impact on tax morality.How culture acts on and affects the willingness to pay taxes is a new topic,but there is a lack of research in this field.China is a country with a long history.Chinese traditional culture has a profound and lasting influence on people.Nowadays,with further promoting the modernization of national governance system and governance capacity,an in-depth study of the internal logical relationship between culture and tax morality and the proposal of tax governance from the cultural perspective is an innovative inheritance and application of Chinese culture.Meanwhile,it also provides a new research perspective for national governance and tax governance.This article absorbs the latest achievements of Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory,selects data from world value survey(WVS),GDP data of countries(or regions)from World Bank and the rule of law index of countries(or regions)from International Country Risk Guide(ICRG),studies the relationship between culture and tax morality,and analyzes the influence mechanism of culture on tax morals.Combining with the cultural characteristics of our country,this paper expounds the tax morality,and puts forward the cultural path to improve the tax morality of our country.Firstly,the paper expounds the background and significance of the topic,and puts forward the research ideas,contents,methods,difficulties and innovations.On this basis,the starting point of this study is to analyze the relationship between culture and tax morality and the mechanism of the influence of culture on tax morality.At the same time,it puts forward the foothold of the study,that is,to explore ways and means to improve tax morality in China from a cultural perspective.Secondly,the article arranges the relevant literature of tax morality at home and abroad,introduces the concept and measurement method of tax morality,and analyses the main factors affecting tax morality from three perspectives:the relationship between citizens and the state,social factors and demographic characteristics.Using Citespace and HistCite to analyze domestic and foreign literature,in order to understand the current status of tax morality research.Thirdly,using Hofstede’s cultural theory and relevant data such as World Values Survey(WVS)data,we study the relationship between culture and tax morality from two levels of state and individual,and confirm the influence of culture on tax morality.Through the establishment of intermediary effect model,this paper analyses the influence mechanism of culture on tax morality,and reveals the intermediary role of corruption tolerance.Through the establishment of cross-level interaction model,we can draw the conclusion that tax morality can be improved by improving the social and cultural environment.Fourthly,this paper studies the evolution of tax morality and its main influencing factors in China.Based on the data of WVS,this paper analyses the development and changes of tax morality in China from 1990 to 2013,divides the evolution process of tax morality into three stages,and summarizes the characteristics of tax morality in China through domestic vertical comparison and international horizontal comparison.Through the analysis of effective samples,it is concluded that the tolerance of corruption is the key factor affecting tax morality in China.Fifth,the article firstly introduces the cultural characteristics of our country,and explains the tax environment of our country from the perspective of cultural characteristics.Then,the paper expounds the concept,type and harm of tax corruption,and analyzes the causes of tax corruption from the perspective of culture in combination with the empirical analysis conclusions of chapter III and chapter Ⅳ.It is found that the existence of discretion,uncertain tax policy and the short-term limitation of tax manager’s power in China’s tax environment are likely to lead to tax corruption due to their interaction with high power distance,weak uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation in cultural characteristics.Finally,the article summarizes the content of the full text,and puts forward the core viewpoints and conclusions of this study.From the three cultural characteristics of power distance,uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation,this paper puts forward some policy suggestions to improve tax morality in China.At the same time,the problems of inadequate research content,incomplete data and insufficient methods was found through the research and the assumption of carrying out follow-up research are put forward.