Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 16th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview III. Working Group on Integrity in Public Governance Author(s) Vladimir Boguslavskiy Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw Poland Title Achieving integrity in tax administration. Do taxpayers and tax collectors have common attitude to the issue and what are the consequences of? Comparison of Poland and Russia File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract The social psychological approach used for the analysis of premises of corruption and other unfair practices about taxpaying is based on monitoring group ethos of entrepreneurs and tax collecting units in Poland and Russia, as well as revealing the range of excuses available for their counterparts in taxpaying – tax administrators in both countries. The excuses for nonpaying (evading or avoiding) taxes have origin in culturally internalized attitudes towards the duty to paying taxes. The qualitative research conducted by me show several points of common understanding between entrepreneurs and tax collectors in both countries. Russian and Polish participants of taxpaying process are within two main paradigms of “how to save on taxes”. The Polish entrepreneurs and tax collectors share attitude on acceptability of legal avoidance. If the formal clause is followed then the entrepreneurs have full right not to pay taxes. Analyzing expectations from the state and government of entrepreneurs and general public in Poland, I show the overt conflict between the letter and the spirit of the law bringing about diminishing income of the Polish budget and increasing reliance on external financing of infrastructural and other projects (say from Structural Fund). The Russian case is different since it’s taxpaying culture is more emotionally pregnant. Unlike in Poland where the main way is tax avoidance, in Russia tax evasion until recently was the main way not to pay taxes. Here the letter of the law has no such important meaning as the spirit of the law. However the later is subject of interpretation according to the position of the interpreter. Considerable income differentiation, also supported by flat rate of PIT, brought about split of attitudes of the population on acceptability of unfair taxpaying practices. The economically active and relatively prosperous strata of Russian society favorably treat non-paying taxes. Economically less fortunate population condemns unfair tax practices but only because of inability to take part in the game of tax cheat. Growth of aspiration of president and central government to change the situation gave ideological power to tax administration to become more tough towards the businesses. Traditional instrument of authoritarian power were used to fear the business community so now the unfair practices give the pass to the fine-tune tax avoidance. The straggle for the best minds for the lowers competition is supported by income from natural resources export, by mean of increasing of wages of public administration employees. Both countries lack integrated approach towards implementation of taxpaying culture, though Russia has already started experiment in the sphere of changing the attitude of Russians and Poland relies on automatic adjusting of the situation with the integration into EU.
