Três visões sobre ética e evasão fiscal: como se posicionam os estudantes da área de negócios?

Abstract

Tax evasion is a behavioral problem that threatens the government's ability to raise revenue. However, there are still few papers that examine non-compliance with tax obligations under an ethical perspective. In the literature on the subject, three views related to the ethics of tax evasion emerged. The first one assumes that evasion is never ethical. The second assumes that evasion is always or almost always ethical. The third view is associated with the notion that evasion is not absolutely unethical. In this sense, this study aimed to investigate how 195 students from the courses of Business Management, Accounting and Economics of Federal Universities of Minas Gerais are positioned among these three views, starting from the model of McGee, Ho and Li (2008), which presents 15 statements on tax evasion. The students were classified according to their vision through a cluster analysis and the associations of variables such as age, gender, etc. with each of the groups formed were analyzed. After a cluster analysis, it was found that most of the students were positioned in the group that considers evasion as always unethical, while the smallest group considers evasion as ethical. It has been found that women are less prone to tax evasion and that older individuals are less likely to view evasion as ethic. Regarding the courses, it was noticed that the students of Accounting are less prone to tax evasion when compared to the students of the courses of Business Management and Economics. Finally, the views of each of the groups were synthesized through the analysis of the Discourse of the Collective Subject.