Social Capital and Tax Morale in Spain

There is a growing literature on the individual determinants of the intrinsic motivation to pay taxes, what has been labeled 'tax morale'. Most previous analyses of tax morale have utilized data from the World Values Survey and/or the European Values Survey. In this paper we use a unique data set from Spain's Survey of Fiscal Policy; this data set also allows a much richer exploration of the role of various new measures of 'social capital' as determinants of tax morale than has been possible before, where social capital refers to the institutions, norms, and networks that promote cooperation and enable collective action. Our results indicate the important role of social capital measures as determinants of tax morale. In particular, we find that an individual's tax morale is significantly and positively associated with his or her perception of the benefits derived by society from the public delivery of goods and services. The perceived size of fiscal fraud also influences directly and negatively the intrinsic motivation to pay taxes.