Behavioural Approach to Tax Evasion in Selected European Countries

Battling tax evasion is one of the most important issues in tax policy on the EU level. Additionally, behavioural approach has been proven useful when applied on various areas of the economy. Despite these facts, it has rarely been used in the context of tax compliance, especially in the EU. This thesis tries to provide more insight into the area by observing the relation of social norms and the levels of tax evasion in selected EU countries and it manages to prove that the relation indeed exists. Moreover, part of the research is dedicated to the effect of mindset priming especially on the perception of corruption and attitudes towards cheating on taxes. Data was collected using a questionnaire and several statistical methods were applied to conduct proper analysis including descriptive statistics, the Chi-squared and the Mann-Whitney U test, and logistic regression in the STATA programme. The results suggest that EU interventions focusing on social norms on tax compliance could be an efficient tool in decreasing the significance of the tax evasion issue.