Building a Social Contract? Understanding Tax Morale in Nigeria
- Authors
- McCulloch, N[McCulloch, Neil]; Moerenhout, T[Moerenhout, Tom]; Yang, J[Yang, Joonseok]
- Issue Date
- 1-Feb-2021
- Publisher
- ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
- Citation
- JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES, v.57, no.2, pp.226 - 243
- Indexed
- SSCI
SCOPUS
- Journal Title
- JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
- Volume
- 57
- Number
- 2
- Start Page
- 226
- End Page
- 243
- URI
- https://scholarworks.bwise.kr/skku/handle/2021.sw.skku/7355
- DOI
- 10.1080/00220388.2020.1797688
- ISSN
- 0022-0388
- Abstract
- An important part of every country's development process is the building of a social contract in which citizens pay tax and, in turn, receive public goods and services. Evidence suggests that this is associated with the establishment of a norm of tax payment and a belief that non-payment is wrong. We exploit a new, nationally representative, dataset to explore which factors are associated with higher tax morale in Nigeria. We find that a perception of higher penalties and greater difficulty avoiding taxes are both associated with higher tax morale. Tax morale is also higher the more people believe that other Nigerians pay taxes, the less frequently they have to pay bribes and the greater the trust they have in tax officials. However, we also find that Nigerians who believe that tax officials discriminate in their treatment of different ethnic, religious and gender groups have higher, not lower, tax morale. And we find no relationship between service delivery and measures of tax morale based on the respondent's own behaviour, in contrast to the positive association found in the literature using broader measures of tax morale. This suggests that building a social contract based on taxation may be harder than previously thought.
- Files in This Item
- There are no files associated with this item.
- Appears in
Collections - Social Sciences > Department of Political Science and Diplomacy > 1. Journal Articles
Items in ScholarWorks are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.