To pay or not to pay? Business owners’ tax morale:testing a neo-institutional framework in a transition environment

In order to understand how the environment influences business owner/managers’ attitudes towards tax morale, we build a theoretical model based on a neo-institutionalist framework. Our model combines three complementary perspectives on institutions—normative, cultural–cognitive and regulatory–instrumental. This enables a broader understanding of factors that influence business owner–managers’ attitudes towards tax evasion. We test the resulting hypotheses using regression analysis on survey data on business owner/managers in Latvia—a transition country, which has undergone massive institutional changes since it was part of the Soviet Union over 25 years ago. We find that legitimacy of the tax authorities and the government (normative dimension), feeling of belonging to the nation (cultural–cognitive dimension) and perceptions of the risk and severity of punishment (regulatory–instrumental dimension) are all associated with higher tax morale for business owners and managers

Converting the accounting system of a transition economy: a case study of Russia

This paper examines factors that affect the accounting system in Russia as it moves towards the adoption and implementation of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Current rules are examined and selected and Russian Accounting Standards (RAS) are compared to IFRS, followed by a discussion of how closely Russian accountants actually follow the rules and the factors that affect accounting practice. The reliability of Russian financial statements is also discussed, followed by a discussion of Russia's options for the future, which groups support the various options, and the likely outcomes. Conclusions are presented in the final section.Russian accounting standards; RAS; international financial reporting standards; IFRS; GAAP; transition economy; Russia; accounting practice.