The other day I received an email from Dr. Andreas Peichl, Senior Research Associate with IZA (Institute for the study of labor) in Germany. Dr. Peichl directed me to a recent co-authored study - "Nice Guys Finish Last: Are People with Higher Tax Morale Taxed More Heavily?" (Jan. 2012).
"
In the Peichl paper, the authors conclude that evidence exists "of efficient taxation of groups with heterogeneous levels of ‘tax morale’." They used a model "where high tax morale implies
a high subjective cost of evading taxes. The model predicts that ‘nice guys finish last’: groups
with higher tax morale will be taxed more heavily, simply because taxing them is less costly.
... Income groups with high tax morale systematically face higher average and marginal tax rates."
You'll find their 38-page paper here.
In the US, we have a $450 billion annual tax gap much of which is from small businesses. Wage-earners are most compliant with the W-2 reporting form and paycheck withholding helping to give this group high tax morale. That tax morale is bolstered by the W-2 form they receive. Perhaps these folks are also the "nice guys" in the US since the tax on labor is higher today than the tax on investment since 2003 when the rate on qualified dividends dropped from a high of 39.6% to 15% and capital gains from 20% to 15%. Plus, for most workers, all of their wage income is subject to payroll tax of 7.65% paid by them and another 7.65% paid by the employer (total of 15.3%).
What do you think?