Education regarding taxation from the attitude and intuition to experiment

This paper analyses students' attitudes towards taxation. The literature in the field of tax compliance research shows that there is a relationship between tax knowledge and attitudes towards taxation, more specific, higher tax knowledge determines more favourable attitudes towards taxation. The more favourable attitudes are the more favourable behaviour could possibly be. What is important in studying tax compliance is indeed the tax behaviour, but this paper has had the purpose the observe and analyze students' attitudes as a posible prediction of the future taxpayers' behaviour, more or less compliant. The paper was designed in the spirit of behavioral economics approach. According to this approach tax compliance research focuses on the non-economic determinants of taxpayers' behavior like tax education, tax knowledge and attitudes towards taxation. After summarysing the literature in the field of study, a survey was conducted among students who did or did not participate to a taxation course and did or did not pay taxes. The survey was designed using the american IRS Taxpayer Attitude Survey and other surveys developed by authors mentioned in the literature review. To measure attitudes towards taxation Likert scales were used. The respondents were asked to evaluate some statements and to express their level of agreement or disagreement with regard to those specific statements. The result are consistent with the previous research: there are differences in attitudes among the student groups and students who participated to a taxation course seem to have more favorable attitudes towards taxation.