Seminar 1: Religion, Religiosity and Tax

The presentation explores the effect of religion and religiosity on tax compliance decisions. It starts with an overview of the literature that explores the relationship between religion (specifically Islam), religiosity and tax compliance. Then it follows by presenting the findings of two studies of the author. The first work investigates the theoretical concerns of Religion and Religiosity over the concept of tax. Additionally, the qualitative study provides an in-depth understanding of the effects of knowledge of religion on tax compliance behaviour. In particular, findings shed a light on four critical issues for Muslim taxpayers, such as Effects of their Islamic stance on tax compliance; rightful due concerns of tax evasion behaviour; comparison of Zakat with taxes; and the intervention of Islamic scholars on the tax compliance decisions of Muslims. 

The second study (in progress) further investigates whether or not religiosity has a linear or a quadratic (u-shaped) relationship with tax compliance. The second paper analyses the religiosity effect by estimating a structural model using online survey data. The findings suggest that religiosity has a significant effect on both tax morale and tax compliance. Further, the relationship between religiosity and both tax morale and tax compliance is curvilinear. Additionally, the paper suggests that high levels of religiosity could discourage OMSCs to comply with the tax system.

Presenter: Recep Yucedogru (Assistant Professor in Law at Bülent Ecevit University)

Recep Yucedogru is Assistant Professor at Bulent Ecevit University, Turkey. He holds an MA in Fiscal Law, BA in Public Finance, and was awarded his Ph.D. in 2016 from the University of Nottingham on the topic of Understanding tax morale and tax compliance of owner-managers of small companies.  He also worked for the Turkish Revenue Administration between 2005 and 2009. 

He is teaching Tax Law and Public finance in the university. He is interested in tax behaviour and tax morale with a special interest in Religiosity, Tax Ethics, Evasion Behaviour and Tax Administration

Discussant: Yvette Lind (Assistant professor, Copenhagen Business School)

Yvette Lind is an Assistant professor in tax law at Copenhagen Business School as of 2019. She defended her doctoral thesis (“Crossing a Border” published by Jure) on taxation and social security contributions linked to cross-border working at Umeå University (Sweden) in 2017 and subsequently received a post-doc from the Swedish TOR/Skattenytt foundation (2017-2019). The post-doc project focused on the relationship between taxation and state aid law in an international setting, e.g. state aid investigations linked to multinational corporations and the design and application of environmental taxes. Currently exploring research questions concerning taxation and democracy.