EU-funded project tests Italians and Swedes on tax compliance

With recently renewed political and public interest in the fight against tax evasion, one EU-funded project has timely published research exploring the levels of tax compliance in two EU Member States.

The WILLINGTOPAY? project, coordinated at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, is broadly focused on the interactive relationships between policy choices, institutions and ideas. This is at the core of the project’s research and in simple terms, it is interested in exploring and explaining the multiple paths and different choices made in various democratic welfare states. One of the primary policy areas that the project is focusing on to explore these issues is taxation.

Social scientists have evidence that differences in social norms and culture help to explain why some people are more willing to cheat with regards to their taxes. The project decided to test their central theory on whether such cultural differences are indeed a strong indicator for tax evasion and chose two EU Member States that arguably lie at opposite ends of the taxation spectrum – Sweden and Italy.

See more: cordis.europa.eu