Risk Perception and Risk Attitude on a Tax Evasion Context

When considering tax reporting, taxpayers have an individual attitude towards the risk of being caught evading taxes by the tax authorities. This attitude is interdependent with how this inherent risk is perceived. We propose to analyse this phenomenon through a risk perspective by adding a risk attitude and corresponding perceived probability of being caught evading. In this paper, we study the dynamics of tax evasion under risk perception and attitude, and the consequent propensity of imitators to evade or to comply. Under this proposal, we conduct our experiments through a multi-agent based simulation. Simulation results suggest first that the risk attitude, in conjunction with perceived risk and its consequences are the main reasons to guarantee a low level of tax evasion. Secondly, results also demonstrate a non-linear impact of tax rate, investment interest rate and fines which is especially interesting and non-intuitive.