Data from: "Willing to pay?" Tax compliance in Britain and Italy: an experimental analysis

As shown by the recent crisis, tax evasion poses a significant problem for
countries such as Greece, Spain and Italy. While these societies certainly
possess weaker fiscal institutions as compared to other EU members, might
broader cultural differences between northern and southern Europe also
help to explain citizens’ (un)willingness to pay their taxes? To address
this question, we conduct laboratory experiments in the UK and Italy, two
countries which straddle this North-South divide. Our design allows us to
examine citizens’ willingness to contribute to public goods via taxes
while holding institutions constant. We report a surprising result: when
faced with identical tax institutions, redistribution rules and audit
probabilities, Italian participants are significantly more likely to
comply than Britons. Overall, our findings cast doubt upon “culturalist”
arguments that would attribute cross-country differences in tax compliance
to the lack of morality amongst southern European taxpayers.