Public Acceptance of Tax, Corruption And Democracy: A Cross - Country Study

In public sector economics, government intervention in the economy is generally justified on the existence of market failure. Government intervention means providing public goods. Financing public goods means taxation. Based on the theory of public choice in which citizens take part in elections to vote on the amount of public goods and taxes, we develop a model that analyzes the effect of democracy and corruption on the desire of taxpayers to pay taxes via the information that they convey about the quantity and quality of public goods in the utility function. Our theoretical analysis contends that desire to pay taxes is lower when corruption is higher or democracy is lower. Furthermore, it contends that the effect of corruption is stronger. Our empirical findings, based on a panel data analysis for 117 countries on the time period 1996-2010, support our theoretical analysis. Especially, we find that corruption is more important in the public desire to pay taxes.