1. INTRODUCTION

Why tax morale is so important for taxcompliance policy? Why taxpayers willingly

obey the tax policies/rules? Some people areinfluenced by social norms and feel quiltwhen underreport their taxable income;others feel obligation to the government and

AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW TO THE TAX EVASION: THE EFFECTOF TAX MORALE ON PAYING TAXES IN MACEDONIA AND

EU COUNTRIES

Maja Ristovskaa, Nikica Mojsoska-Blazevskib* and Miso Nikolovb

aLaboratory for Labour Market and Social Policy Analysis,University American College-Skopje, Macedonia

bSchool of Business Economics and Management, University American College-Skopje, Macedonia

(Received 18 April 2013; accepted 13 June 2013)

Abstract

In the last couple of years there is a growing literature and evidence suggesting that enforcementefforts alone cannot achieve significant increase of tax compliance. This literature links the willingnessof citizens to pay taxes with the social values and norms, i.e. to the tax morale. If correct, the optimalgovernment policies to tackle the tax evasion might defer considerably from the common ones.

The aim of this study is therefore to investigate factors that shape the tax morale of Macedoniancitizens, and to provide a comparative assessment with the EU countries. Our empirical investigation isbased on the work of Frey and Torgler (2007), through estimating an ordered probit model in which thedependent variable is the tax morale, and is regressed on a number of independent variables, age, gender,marital status, education, national pride, trust in institutions, happiness, life satisfaction, etc. Data for ourstudy are from the fourth wave (2008) of the European Values Survey. Our main finding is that contraryto other studies for the European countries, the non-demographic factors are more important factorsinfluencing tax morale in Macedonia than the demographic ones. The main contribution of this study isthat it is the first attempt in our knowledge to investigate the factors driving the tax morale in Macedonia.

Key words: tax morale, tax evasion, social values and norms, European Values Survey, ordered probit

* Corresponding author: nikica@uacs.edu.mk

S e r b i a n

J o u r n a l

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M a n a g e m e n t

Serbian Journal of Management 8 (2) (2013) 169 - 183

www.sjm06.com

DOI: 10.5937/sjm8-3776

authorities and the way they are treated byauthorities affects their decision to cooperateon paying taxes. Some individuals aresimply predetermined not to evade and theydo not even try to find a way to cheat. Othersare predisposed tax evaders. However,despite these differences in predisposition topay taxes based on social and cultural norms,even modern governments rely on the“traditional” enforcement mechanisms. Inparticular, governments’ tax compliancestrategies usually rely on enforcementmatters applying higher penalties and/orincreasing the frequency of audits thereforeimposing a method that an individual paystaxes because - and only because - of theeconomic consequences of detection andpunishment. The still prevalent greyeconomy and tax evasion around the world,including Macedonia, might point to a loweffectiveness of this enforcementmechanism. This along with the variety oftaxpayers’ behaviour raises a need to gobeyond the traditional assessment ofeffectiveness of enforcement mechanisms inanswering the tax compliance, and to use analternative approach to assess the tax morale,i.e. the individuals’ decision whether to paytaxes. This alternative approach is based onthe behavioural economics.

Therefore the aim of this study is toinvestigate factors that shape the tax moraleof Macedonian citizens, as well as to presenta comparative perspective of the factorsdriving the tax morale in Macedonia,neighboring countries and the EU MemberStates. We examine the factors influencingtax morale related to the peoples’ attitudestowards the society and the basicdemographic factors. The main contributionof this study is that it is the first attempt inour knowledge to investigate the factorsdriving the tax morale in Macedonia.

The structure of this paper is as follows.Section 2 presents a brief literature review onthe current studies in the area of the factorsthat influence tax morale. In section 3, weexplain methodology and data used in thestudy. Section 4 presents the descriptiveanalysis. Section 5 discusses the results,whereas section 6 contains concludingremarks.

2. FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE TAXMORALE

The conventional wisdom is that peoplepay taxes because of the fear to be caught ifevading taxes and the potential penalty.From a theoretical point of view, thebehavioural decision model for taxcompliance is attributed to Allingham andSandmo (1972), and is based on the moregeneral Beckerian economics of crime model(Becker, 1968). This model argues that taxcompliance depends only on enforcement,given that the declared income is a positivefunction of the penalty and the probability ofbeing caught. In this respect, increasing theprobability of tax audits and/or imposing alarge penalty rate in case of evasion wouldhelp the government to reduce tax evasion.Following this line of research, other authorsdeveloped more complex models of taxcompliance (including, for instance, laboursupply as a predictor), (see for example,Cowell, 1990; Andreoni et al., 1998; Alm,1999; Slemrod & Yitzhaki, 2000). The mainconclusions of those studies also focused onthe financial incentives for tax evasion,proposing that the latter is to be fought withhigher penalties or more frequent tax audits.

However, in reality, the share of taxpayersthat undergo a tax audit is relatively low(generally less than 1%) and rarely the

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punishment is larger than the amount ofunpaid taxes (Alm & Torgler, 2012). Hence,if the conclusions of the Becker’s model areapplied, we can expect almost everybody toevade taxes, while in the real world theopposite is true: a large share of taxpayers donot consider cheating as an option, even incases when there are direct economicbenefits to them from the cheating (Morelo& Pujol, 2012). This raises a doubt over theexplanatory power of this model; otherfactors that go beyond the threat of penaltyand sanction, into the area of human being’sbehaviour might better explain individualbehaviour in tax compliance decisions. AsBuchanan (1995) argues, human behaviouris very complex and, inter alia, influenced bynorms “... that act as internal constraints.”(p.194). Moreover, the tax culture in acountry arises “... by the interaction of theactors and the cultural values like ‘honesty’,‘justice’ or also a ‘sense of duty’…” (Nerre,2008, p.155). In this regard, the insight ontax morale issue that is used to explain thesocial values and norms and social anddemographic context may provide betterexplanation of why people willingly conformto paying taxes.

The term “tax morale” here is defined asmorale obligation to pay taxes, a belief incontributing to society by paying taxes (Frey& Torgler, 2007). Tax morale measuresindividual attitude towards paying taxes,unlike tax evasion that refers to individualbehaviour.1

Based on the previous studies, we proceedby examining different factors that influencethe tax morale in order to gain broaderunderstanding of the issue of tax compliance.In doing so, we also build an argument forassessing the tax morale from an alternativeperspective that accounts for thedemographic factors, as well as the

respondent’s values and emotional states.Based on the approach used by Doerrenberget al. (2010), demographic factors aregrouped into: socio-demographicfactors/variables and socio-economicfactors/variables.

Socio - demographic variables:Empirical studies provide evidence on thelink between the tax morale and severalindividual characteristics, such as age,gender, marital status, religion, religiosity,etc. Based on a study from 17 Europeancountries, Lago-Penas and Lago-Penas(2010) argue that those groups of thepopulation who tend to pay more attention tomorality and ethics should have higher taxmorale. Those are mainly religious citizens,older people and females. Similarly, Freyand Torgler (2007) show that in the Easternand Western Europe, older people, women,married people and people with higherchurch attendance exhibit higher level of taxmorale. The literature review of previousstudies conducted by Lago-Penas and Lago-Penas (2010) shows that age and religiosityare positively and significantly related to thetax morale in all studies, whereas the genderand marital status are not that robustpredictors of the tax morale.

Socio-economic variables: Studies thatassess the impact of the socio-economicvariables on the tax morale usually focus onthe educational attainment of an individual,employment status and financial experience(income). There is however no consistencyamong studies about the significance of thesevariables, as well as about the sign of thecoefficients. Regarding the education, someauthors argue that people that are moreeducated are more likely to get a chance toevade taxes, whereas others find that peoplethat are more educated might be in a betterposition of recognizing the importance of

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1 This tax morale approach is commonly used to explain why people pay taxes, but not why they evade them.

paying taxes for the society, therefore theprobability of evading taxes reduces witheducation (Torgler & Schneider, 2006; Frey& Torgler, 2007). Findings are alsodivergent regarding the income. Theunderlying assumption in this case is thathigher income earners would tend to evadetaxes as evasion yields higher returns tohigher income earners. Based on Europeandata, Konrad and Qari (2009) do not findevidence that income affects tax morale. Onthe other hand, Lago-Penas and Lago-Penas(2010) find that tax morale increases withincome given that paying taxes when incomeis high reduces the financial stress. When itcomes to the working status, almost allfindings indicate that the self-employed tendto have lower tax morale than individualswith other work status (Torgler, 2004; Almet al., 2006; Frey & Torgler, 2007; Konrad &Qari, 2009). Employees might have fewerchances to evade the taxes especially in thesystems where taxes are paid by theemployers on behalf of the employees, sothat they tend to less frequently evade taxescompared to the self-employed.

Trust in government, administration,legal system: Given that taxpayers’behaviour tends to be governed by “rule”,stable and easily knowable institutions andtrust in those institutions can increase taxmorale (Torgler, 2001; Bird et al., 2008).Previous studies add into regression severalindicators of trust in government institutionsand legal system, such as voice andaccountability, political stability and absenceof violence, government effectiveness,regulatory quality, rule of law and control ofcorruption. McGee et al. (2008) found thatthe strongest argument justifying tax evasionis when the government is corruptive and thetax system unfair. Frey and Torgler (2007)analysed survey data from 30 Western and

Eastern European countries and found a highnegative correlation between perceived taxevasion and tax morale. In other words, if anindividual perceives that other individualstend not to pay their taxes, s/he will havelower tax morale. Furthermore, institutionalcrisis in transition countries in EasternEurope tend to have a negative effect on taxmorale. Trust in legal system is also found tohave a significant effect on the tax morale(Torgler, 2001), by increasing the positivefeelings of citizens towards paying taxes.

Democracy and national pride: Withthe introduction of the democracy in thetransition countries, taxpayers gained a newdecision power (Feld & Frey, 2002). In suchdemocratic setting, it is assumed that taxrevenues are spent according to thetaxpayers’ preferences therefore increasingthe tax morale. Consequently, there might bea relation between the pro-democraticattitude of individuals and the tax morale.Indeed, Lago-Penas and Lago-Penas (2010)find strong positive effect of democracy onthe tax morale across 17 European countries.Regarding the national pride, a similarintuition would suggest that taxpayers whoare proud of their country of residence mightbe more willing to pay taxes. Based on across-country analysis on several Europeancountries, Konrad and Qari (2009) findstrong evidence that patriotism indeed haspositive effect on tax morale. Similar resultsare found for Latin America (Torgler, 2005),Asia (Torgler, 2004) and Russia (Alm et al.,2006). This positive relationship between thenational pride and tax morale is also evidentacross the Eastern Europe or the transitioncountries (Togler, 2001).

Happiness and satisfaction with thelife: Happiness and overall satisfaction withthe life might drive higher tax morale. Freyand Stutzer (2002) argue that happiness

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might influence the economic decisions ofindividuals, such as their consumption,attitudes towards work, investmentsbehaviour, etc. Still, only few studies includehappiness as a regressor, such as that ofTorgler (2004) for Asia. Tekeli’s (2011)study of the determinants of tax morale forTurkey and Japan shows that happiness doesnot have a statistically significant effect ontax morale.

We proceed by examining data andmethodology used in our research.

3. DATA AND METHODOLOGY

The analyses on the main factors thatdrive tax morale in Macedonia is based onsurvey data provided by European ValuesStudy (EVS), the fourth wave (2008).2 TheEVS is a European wide investigation onsocio-cultural and political change. Thesurvey assesses the basic values and beliefsof people throughout Europe. The entire2008 sample includes 47 countries. The EVSmethodological approach is explained indetail in the European Values Study (2008)source book which provides information onresponse rates, the sampling procedures,translation of the questionnaire and fieldwork along with measures of codingreliability and data checks. The countrysurvey in Macedonia was distributed to arepresentative sample of 1,500 individuals.

There are several studies that assess thetax morale for the EU countries, using theEVS dataset (Alm et al., 2006, Frey &Torgler, 2007, Diego et al., 2011). Our studyis based on the methodology used by Freyand Torgler (2007), which estimates anordered probit model where the dependentvariable is the tax morale, which is regressedon a set of independent variables. To

estimate the level of tax morale, we woulduse the following question from the EVSsurvey:

“Please tell me for each of the followingstatements whether you think it can alwaysbe justified, never been justified or it fallssomewhere in between: . . . Cheating ontaxes if you get the chance.”

The question leads to a 10-points scaleindex with two extreme points 1 “neverjustified” and 10 “always justified”. Thisscale for the purposes of this study has beenrecoded into four point scale (0, 1, 2, 3),where the value 3 stands for high tax morale– never be justified; value 2 – mid high taxmorale; value 1 – mid low tax morale andvalue 0 – low tax morale in which responsesfrom 4 through 10 where combined intovalue 0 due to the lack of variance amongthem.

There is, however, some caution inmeasuring the tax morale through self-reported morale. In particular, Elffers at al.(1987) found difference between thereported and actual tax evasion. Moreover,as Andreoni et al. (1998) warns, respondentsmight tend to report higher degree ofcompliance than the real one, especiallythose persons that have been involved in taxevasion practices in the past. We expect inour study that the level of honesty is higheras the question of interest does not refer towhether person has evaded taxes but whethercheating on taxes is justified or not, if aperson gets a chance to cheat. A concernmight also be raised over the use of single-item measures (i.e. single question) ofcomplex, multidimensional attitudestructures, as is the tax morale. However, theuse of such single-item measures “... has theadvantage of reducing problems of indexconstruction complexity, especially asregards measurement procedure or low

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2 Data can be downloaded from: http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/evs/data-and-downloads/.

correlation between items.” (Torgler &Schneider, 2007, p.14). Moreover, somestudies found similar results when using bothsingle–item measures and laboratoryexperiments (see, for example, Cummings etal., 2005; Alm & Torgler, 2006).

Since the dependent variable is orderedcategorical variable, we apply an orderedprobit regression. Within the regression, it isassumed that a latent and continuousmeasure of the dependent variable Si*follows the normal distribution with μi meanand unitary variance. It is defined as:

Si*=β*zi + ei, (1)

whereby zi is a vector of explanatoryvariables describing individual socio-economic and demographic characteristics,as well as individual behaviour, β is thevector of parameters to be estimated and ei isthe random error. We assume that errors arenormally and independently distributed.

Then, the observation mechanism is:

Si = j if τj-1=Si*=τj, (2)

for j=1, …, J, where J is the total number of

categories.

Given the constraints vl<τ for all l<m and

τ0=-∞ and τj=+∞, it follows that the observed

and coded discrete dependent variable Si is

determined from the model as follows:

(3)

where τi, for i=1,…, J, represents thresholds

to be estimated along with the parameter

vector β.

The probability for each category is given

by:

(4)

where, φ(μι) is the cumulative distribution

function for the normal distribution with

mean μι and unit variance. To measure thequantitative effect of this variable wecalculate the marginal effects because theequation is nonlinear. The marginal effectindicates the change in the percentage orprobability of taxpayers having a specificlevel of tax morale when the independentvariable increases by one unit. For thesimplicity, the marginal effects in allestimations are presented for the highestvalue of tax morale only. Furthermore, theanswers such as “don’t know” and missingvalues are eliminated in all estimations. Thevariables used in the study are socio-demographic variables: gender, nationality,age, marital status, religion and religiosity;socio-economic variables: education,employment status, monthly income level;social attitudes and beliefs: national pride,trust in people, trust in government, trust injustice system, trust in civil service,democracy, satisfaction with life andhappiness. STATA software has been usedfor the purposes of the analysis.

4. DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS

The general demographic characteristicsfor our sample show that the average age ofthe respondents is 44 years. The share ofmales in the sample is 56%, and almost 60%

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of the respondents are married. Majority ofthe respondents are from the Christianreligion (80%). Individuals with completedsecondary education dominate in the samplewith a share of 57%. Regarding theeconomic status, 37% of the individuals inour sample are employed (wageemployment), 3.5% are self-employed, 27%are unemployed and the rest are inactivepeople (students, pensioners, housewives).Majority of the respondents have incomebelow 15,550 MKD (45%), 29% haveincome between 15,550 and 27,805 MKD,19% have income between 27,806 and46,000 MKD and 7% have income above46,000 MKD.

Frequencies of responses of individuals inthe country stating that tax morale is neverjustifiable, differentiated by socio-economicgroups, personal characteristics and attitudesare presented in Tables A1 and A2(Appendix A). Based on the data, about 81%of interviewed individuals in Macedoniareported that the “tax morale is neverjustifiable”. A comparison of the frequenciesof the responses on tax morale by gendershows that the most frequent response forboth groups is “never justifiable option”.Regarding the age, descriptive statisticsshow that the frequency of the “neverjustifiable” response increases with the age.Full-time employed are strongly against taxcheating compared to the self-employed. Thetax morale is increasing with the educationlevel; an exception is individuals with noeducation of which 95% reported high taxmorale. Individuals earning higher incomeare more strongly against tax cheatingcompared to low-income citizens. Marriedpeople and widowed more frequently havenegative perception towards cheating thanthe divorced and those never married. About96% of the respondents from Southeast

region in Macedonia reported highest taxmorale. The lowest share of “neverjustifiable” responses is found in Polog andSouthwest region, of 57% and 44%,respectively. Whereas 90% of theindividuals from Christian religion reportedhigh tax morale, that is the case for 45% ofthe respondents from Muslim or otherreligion. In addition, 90% of the respondentsthat hold the Macedonian language as thelanguage of the interview reported high taxmorale, whereas this is the case for 33% ofthe Albanian language interviews. Peoplewho occasionally attend religious servicesare strongly against tax cheating compared tothe more religious people. More than half ofthe respondents attend religious servicesonly on special holy days and occasions. Taxmorale is slightly higher for people who trustthe other people. Individuals who trust morethe government and justice system havehigher tax morale. People who are notconfident and do not trust the civil serviceare more strongly against tax cheating thanthose who put more trust in civil service. Thestrongest opposition to tax cheating is foundamong individuals who are proud of theircountry and those with more pro-democraticbelief. Happiness and satisfaction with lifeare negatively related to the tax morale.

The next section proceeds with aninvestigation of the results from theestimated model.

5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Table B1 (Appendix B) presents mainfindings from the equation (1). Thecoefficient of determination shows thatindependent variables explain about 28% ofthe variability of the tax morale. This impliesthat some other factors than those included in

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the study also have an influence on the taxmorale of Macedonian citizens, which isworth of further exploration conditionalupon data availability. Coefficients are alljointly significant. The individualsignificance is found for several variables,that are: age, language spoken by theinterviewed person (approximation for theethnicity), income level, national pride, trustin government, trust in justice, trust in civilservice, satisfaction with life and view of theindividual effort. All coefficients have theexpected signs as predicted by the previousstudies, with an exception of the coefficientof the trust in civil service.

The findings for Macedonia differ slightlyfrom those of the other studies for theEuropean countries. In particular, while insection 2 we argued that gender, age andmarital status are found significant in allstudies of tax morale within the Europeancountries, in Macedonia only the age of anindividual has an impact on the tax morale.Similarly, out of all socio-economicvariables, only income affects the tax moraleof Macedonian citizens; educationalattainment and economic (labour market)status do not have a significant impact on taxmorale. This is contrary to the findings forother countries, for instance the findings ofLago-Penas and Lago-Penas (2010). On theother hand, most of the variables measuringthe effect of trust (in government, judicialsystem and civil service) on the tax moraleare significant. This is in line with theprevious findings of Torgler (2001), Frey andTorgler (2007), Bird et al. (2008), McGee etal. (2008), etc. Pride and satisfaction with lifeare important determinants of the tax moralein Macedonia, as was found for othercountries (for instance, in Frey & Stutzer,2002; Torgler, 2004; Torgler, 2005; Alm etal., 2006; Konrad & Qari, 2009).

The analysis of the size of the coefficientsis related to the marginal effects of thehighest value of tax morale. There is no clearevidence that tax morale increases with theage since coefficients are insignificant for30-39 age group and 40-49 age group. Theresults indicate that tax morale in the 50-59age group is higher than in the reference agegroup. The proportion of persons of the agegroup 50-59 who report the highest taxmorale is 9 percentage points (p.p) higherthan for the reference age group. Ourfindings also show that, all other things beingequal, being from ethnic Macedonian origin(i.e. who speak Macedonian) increases theprobability of reporting the highest taxmorale by 60 p.p. (compared to otherethnicities), which is rather a strong effect.Tax morale also increases with the income.For instance, the proportion of individualshaving income between 27,806 MKD and46,000 MKD who report highest tax moraleis 9.3 p.p. higher than the proportion ofindividuals with income of below 15,550MKD who report highest tax morale. Thedifference in marginal effects in the highestincome group is slightly smaller than in the27,805-46,001 MKD group. The results alsoindicate a negative relationship between thetax moral and trust in civil service, such thatcitizens with higher trust in civil servicereport lower tax morale. The possibleexplanation for the negative relationshipbetween the tax morale and the trust in civilservice can be related to the view thatalthough the civil service can be trustful,taxpayers money are not spend in the mosteffective way (Gummings et al., 2005).

Similarly, the proportion of citizens whoare very proud of their state who report thehighest tax morale is 11 p.p. higher than theproportion of citizens who are not proud oftheir state and report highest tax morale.

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Being satisfied with the life increases theprobability of reporting the highest taxmorale by 1.1 p.p. compared to individualsthat are not satisfied with the life.

6. CONCLUSION

This paper used an alternative approach toinvestigating the factors that influence thetax morale. The methodological approachwas based on the previous studies that assessfactors that determine the tax morale ofindividuals. We find that contrary to theother studies across the European countries,the demographic factors in Macedonia playvery little role in shaping the tax morale. Theexceptions are age of an individual, ethnicity(i.e. language of interview) and income.Gender, marital status, labour market statusand education are not exercising significanteffect on the tax morale in Macedonia. Theresults also indicate that there is nosignificant correlation between a pro-democracy attitude and tax morale. On theother hand, there is a strong effect of factorsrelated to the trust in governmentinstitutions, judicial system and in the civilservice, national pride and satisfaction withlife on the tax morale.

These findings can be used by the taxpolicy for formulating more effectivepolicies to reducing the tax evasion in thecountry. In particular, we provide someevidence that increasing the tax morale (andpotentially reducing the tax evasion) cannotbe solely tackled with more frequent taxinspections and penalties, i.e. enforcementmechanisms. On contrary, policymakersmight consider enhancing/building thenational pride and increasing the trust ingovernment institutions and judicial systemas alternative, effective measures for highertax morale.

There are some methodological andpractical shortcomings of this study.Methodologically, there might be someconcern over using a single item/question formeasuring complex social phenomena, as thetax morale is. From practical perspective, theactual payment of taxes (or tax evasion) ofan individual might differ from the(reported) tax morale. This raises a need foradditional research in the area of factors thatinfluence payment/evasion of taxes.

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АЛТЕРНАТИВНИ ПОГЛЕД НА ИЗБЕГАВАЊЕ ПЛАЋАЊА

ПОРЕЗА: УТИЦАЈ МОРАЛНИХ НАЗОРА НА ПЛАЋАЊЕ ПОРЕЗА

У МАКЕДОНИЈИ И ЗЕМЉАМА ЕУ

Маја Ристовска, Никица Мојсоска-Блажевски и Мишо Николов

Извод

Последњих неколико година све је више литературе која говори у прилог томе да је примена

само метода принуде недовољна за пораст плаћања пореза. Литература повезује спремност грађана

да плаћају порез са социјалним нормама и вредностима, односно, морала. Уколико се добро

одабере, стратегија власти на увећању плаћања пореза грађања, која даје резултате, најчешће не

спада у конвенционалне.

Из тог разлога, циљ овог истраживања је истраживање фактора који су од утицаја на порески

морал Македонских грађана, као и компаративна анализа са земљама ЕУ. Емиријско истраживање

је засновано на истраживању Фреја и Тајлора из 2007. године. Истраживање представља детаљну

процену модела чија је зависна величина порески морал, чија је регресиона анализа представљена

на већем броју независних варијабли: године, пол, брачни статус, национални понос, поверење у

институције, образовање, задовољство животом, итд. Потребни подаци за истраживање су

добијени на основу истраживања спроведеног 2008, које је мерило “Европске Вредности”

испитаника. Основни резултати истраживања показују да, насупрот резултатима који су добијени

за ЕУ земље, у случају земаља ван ЕУ најзначајнији фактори који утичу на порески морал не

спадају у групу демографских. Такође, ово је прво истраживање оваквог типа, које се бави

пореским моралом, спроведено у Македонији, што даје додатну вредност овом раду.

Кључне речи: Порески морал, Наплата пореза, Друштвене вредности и норме, Истраживање

европске вредности

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180 M. Ristovksa / SJM 8 (2) (2013) 169 - 183

Table A1: Level of tax morale

Table A2: Tax morale by subcategories – Groups that reported high tax morale

APPENDIX А

Dependent variable, high tax morale

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Note: Frequencies of responses. Standard errors reported in parenthesis. Source of the used data: European Values Study the fourth wave

(2008). Available from: http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/evs/data-and-downloads/

APPENDIX B

Table B1: Estimation results from the ordered probit regression

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Note: Reported categories which exert statistically significant impact on the dependent variable Depended variable tax morale on a fourpoint scale. In the reference group: female, lower age group (less than 29 years old), married, no education, lower income group (less than15.550 Macedonian denars); Muslim/other religion, lower level of trust in government, justice, civil service, national pride, democracy1,2,happiness . Standard errors reported in parenthesis. Significance levels are: *0.05<p<0.10, **0.01<p<0.05, ***p<0.01. The marginal effectis calculated at the highest tax morale score. dy/dx is for discrete change of dummy variables from 0 to 1 and dy/dx for factor levels is thediscrete change from the base level.

Table B1: Estimation results from the ordered probit regression (continuance)