Abstract:
Since 1950s, starting with Schmölders’ publication, it has been ascertained that behavioural
aspects have consequences on tax evasion, tax compliance and tax morale.
Most of the researches in this field have focused on two aspects: explaining how tax
behaviours are affected by individuals’ situation and by their social contest, and
creating the microstructured datatsets required for such analysis. Following the tradition,
this thesis will firstly presents an analysis on the psychological framework
used to explain tax related behaviours, in particular with respect to tax evasion
reporting by fellow citizen. In this study, citizens’ sentiment towards the local and
national level administration is proxied through sentiment indexes based on geolocated
twitter data. Secondly, it uses a dataset from the website evasori.info: who
gathers anonymous reports from people which record illegal fiscal events as, for example,
not emitted fiscal documents. It also records tax evaded amounts, economic
sector, geolocalization of the event and even if the report ended with a signalling
to the Italian tax police called Guardia di Finanza. The aim of the thesis is to investigate
if there exists dependencies between spatial, social, demographic variables
and the probability to report the aforementioned facts given that the illicit has actually
happened and the reporter knew the existence of the website. This study will
highlight the active role played by citizens tax behaviour and explain which factors
affect their choice of signalling the event to the tax police. In addition, this study
will explore changes in the reported tax evasion events, and their amounts, through
time and space. To catch the essence of cultural and economic differences among
different areas of Italy, three italian provinces will be analysed: Rome, Milan and
Naples. The timespan taken in consideration brings together three governments:
Monti’s, Renzi’s and Conte I’s ones. The empirical model will consist of a logit
regression, in order to obtain indicators of how much individuals of different areas
have different propensions to report illegal tax evasion behaviours to the tax police.
