The Relationship between Tax Evasion and Corruption. A Cross-country Examination

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between tax evasion and corruption, in order to determine if there can be found a significant connection between the two, and in order to test previous research results that found tax evasion as being positively related to corruption. Moreover, the research examines if tax evasion could be predicted based on data regarding corruption. To this extent, theoretical hypothesis on how corruption influences tax evasion were developed and empirically tested. The research was carried on a cross-country data for the 28 European Union's Member States for the period 2012 -2017 and it used IBM SPSS Statistics 20 in order to analyze and interpret the results. The main finding is that corruption is statistically significantly related to tax evasion and that such relationship is a positive one, as highly corrupt countries also register high levels of tax evasion -as measured by the proxy values used. These findings could be of great use for policymakers all around the world, as a policy against corruption could have major implications on tax evasion and vice versa.