A self-employed taxpayer experimental study on trust, power, and tax compliance in eleven countries

The slippery slope framework explains tax compliance along two main dimensions, trust in authorities and power of authorities, which influence taxpayers’ compliance attitudes. Through frequentist and Bayesian analyses, we investigated the framework’s assumptions on a sample of 2786 self-employed taxpayers from eleven post-communist and non-post-communist countries doing business in five economic branches. After using scenarios that experimentally manipulated trust and power, our results confirmed the framework’s assumptions regarding the attitudes of the self-employed taxpayers; trust and power fostered intended tax compliance and diminished tax evasion, trust boosted voluntary tax compliance, whereas power increased enforced tax compliance. Additionally, self-employed taxpayers from post-communist countries reported higher intended tax compliance and lower tax evasion than those from non-post-communist countries. Our results offer tax authorities insights into how trust and power may contribute to obtaining and maintaining high tax compliance levels amid global economic challenges, downturns, and increasing tax compliance costs.