{"id":17860,"date":"2008-04-04T00:00:01","date_gmt":"2008-04-04T05:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/say-tax-cheating-is-wrong\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:43:22","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:43:22","slug":"say-tax-cheating-is-wrong","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2008\/04\/04\/say-tax-cheating-is-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Say Tax Cheating is Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve been hassling with your tax return as the April 15 filing deadline approaches, you may be interested to know that eight-in-ten of your fellow citizens (79%) consider not reporting all income on one\u2019s taxes to be morally wrong, while just 5% consider it morally acceptable and 14% say it\u2019s not a moral issue. (The only behavior on a list tested in a Pew Social Trends Survey that drew more moral condemnation than cheating on one\u2019s taxes is cheating on a spouse. Some 88% say it is morally wrong for married people to have an affair, while 3% say it is morally acceptable and 7% say it is not a moral issue.) Of course, moral disapproval is one thing, behavior another. The IRS\u2019s most recent estimate of the gross \u201ctax gap\u201d \u2014 the difference between what taxpayers should have paid and what they actually paid on a timely basis in 2001 \u2014 comes to some $345 billion, of which IRS enforcement activities and other late payments recovered about $55 billion. Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eight-in-ten Americans (79%) say they consider not reporting all income on one’s tax returns to be morally wrong, while just 5% consider it morally acceptable and 14% say it’s not a moral 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