General prevention of tax evasion: A factorial survey approach

A factorial survey design is used to examine the taxpaying decisions of a random sample of adults. Data collected by asking respondents to rate their chances of cheating on their taxes under varying experimental conditions show only a small proportion of the sample expects to evade taxes. The few likely offenders judge lower tax rates to reduce their incentive to cheat, while higher audit rates, heavier prison sentences, and fines act as key inhibitors to tax cheating. The implications of this methodology and these data for future studies of tax evasion and deviance are briefly discussed.An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the 1986 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology in Atlanta, Georgia.