Soliciting the Antecedents of Tax Ethics:An Indian Perspective

Arun Sharma, University Business School, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, India
Poonam Sharma, PG Department of Commerce, Khalsa College Amritsar, India
Jaspal Singh, University School of Financial Studies, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, India

Tax compliance constitutes an important aspect of a government’s efforts at socioeconomic management to ensure public welfare, equity, and development of the state. Driven by the shortage of financial resources, states–especially developing countries–have started to view tax compliance as a serious matter. This study is an attempt to analyze the dynamics of tax morale among the Indian taxpayers and to develop a well-structured scale to measure tax morale among the taxpayers. Survey data collected from a sample of four hundred and fifteen individual respondents produced a multi-factoral solution explaining sixty nine percent variation in the factor structure. The psychometric properties of the five-factorstructure scale–fiscal exchange, conditional cooperation, social capital, institutional dynamics, and financial satisfaction have been established through confirmatory factor analysis. The postulated survey instrument intends to provide new insights on and implications of the tax compliance problem.
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