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Australian higher education funding policy has been a contentious and emotionally charged topic on the political agenda since the introduction of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS). Under HECS, students have options either to pay upfront or defer payment. This article examines the implications for the Australian Taxation Office, which has responsibility for debt collection among students who defer HECS payments. Results show that HECS debt undermines tax compliance directly, and indirectly through perceived injustice. The path model demonstrates how perceptions of government policy can shape cooperation with government in other spheres.

This study investigates how the self-employed define themselves and their businesses in relation to taxation issues, and whether there is evidence that this segment engages with taxation in ways that are different from other segments of the population. Data are collected from a random sample of 2040 Australians. Four domains are chosen for comparison: perceived deterrence for non-compliance, tax morale, perceived fairness, and work practice. As evident in the discriminant function analysis, the self-employed are distinguished by not receiving an annual tax refund, perceiving themselves as paying less than their fair share of tax, having less tax competence and independence, perceiving greater power in the tax office to elicit compliance, favouring small government and minimum government interference, and opposing tax expenditure for redistributive programmes such as health, welfare and education. Findings are discussed in a regulatory context.

Democratic theorists increasingly stress that democratic legitimacy rests primarily on authentic deliberation. Critics of deliberative democracy believe that this hope is unrealistic - that deliberation either will prove intractable across political differences or will exacerbate instability. This paper deploys some tools of political psychology, notably Q methodology and values analysis, to investigate the conditions under which effective deliberation is likely to occur. These tools are applied to contemporary political debates in Australia, concerned with how the Australian polity should be constituted in light of a reform agenda underpinned by a discourse we term "Inclusive Republicanism." An investigation of the character of the basic value commitments associated with discursive positions in these debates shows that some differences will yield to deliberation, but others will not. When two discourses subscribe to different value bases, deliberation will induce reflection and facilitate positive-sum outcomes. When a discourse has a value base but finds its specific goals opposed by a competitor that otherwise has no value base of its own, deliberation will be ineffective. When one discourse subscribes to a value base that another questions, but without providing an alternative, deliberation can help to bridge idealism and cynicism.

Democratic theorists increasingly stress that democratic legitimacy rests primarily on authentic deliberation. Critics of deliberative democracy believe that this hope is unrealistic - that deliberation either will prove intractable across political differences or will exacerbate instability. This paper deploys some tools of political psychology, notably Q methodology and values analysis, to investigate the conditions under which effective deliberation is likely to occur. These tools are applied to contemporary political debates in Australia, concerned with how the Australian polity should be constituted in light of a reform agenda underpinned by a discourse we term "Inclusive Republicanism." An investigation of the character of the basic value commitments associated with discursive positions in these debates shows that some differences will yield to deliberation, but others will not. When two discourses subscribe to different value bases, deliberation will induce reflection and facilitate positive-sum outcomes. When a discourse has a value base but finds its specific goals opposed by a competitor that otherwise has no value base of its own, deliberation will be ineffective. When one discourse subscribes to a value base that another questions, but without providing an alternative, deliberation can help to bridge idealism and cynicism.

Aggressive tax planning is found to be a cyclical phenomenon in Australia and the United States. While people strongly disapprove of it, mass participation in aggressive tax planning occurs during cyclical upswings, probably at a level involving well over 100,000 Australians in illegal schemes during the late 1990s. We analyse these cycles as a market in the vice of tax scheme promotion that is countered by widespread virtuous sentiments in the democracy. Community attitudes to tax cheating are therefore not seen as the problem, but as crucial to its solution. There is a democratic demand for tax system integrity. This demand creates a market for honest tax advice professionalism. Sophisticated regulators can use these community attitudes as the crucial resource for flipping markets in vice to markets in virtue. Cycles occur because markets in virtue and vice dominate at different periods of history.

Australian higher education funding policy has been a contentious and emotionally charged topic on the political agenda since the introduction of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS). Under HECS, students have options either to pay upfront or defer payment. This article examines the implications for the Australian Taxation Office, which has responsibility for debt collection among students who defer HECS payments. Results show that HECS debt undermines tax compliance directly, and indirectly through perceived injustice. The path model demonstrates how perceptions of government policy can shape cooperation with government in other spheres.

This study investigates how the self-employed define themselves and their businesses in relation to taxation issues, and whether there is evidence that this segment engages with taxation in ways that are different from other segments of the population. Data are collected from a random sample of 2040 Australians. Four domains are chosen for comparison: perceived deterrence for non-compliance, tax morale, perceived fairness, and work practice. As evident in the discriminant function analysis, the self-employed are distinguished by not receiving an annual tax refund, perceiving themselves as paying less than their fair share of tax, having less tax competence and independence, perceiving greater power in the tax office to elicit compliance, favouring small government and minimum government interference, and opposing tax expenditure for redistributive programmes such as health, welfare and education. Findings are discussed in a regulatory context.

Australian higher education funding policy has been a contentious and emotionally charged topic on the political agenda since the introduction of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS). Under HECS, students have options either to pay upfront or defer payment. This article examines the implications for the Australian Taxation Office, which has responsibility for debt collection among students who defer HECS payments. Results show that HECS debt undermines tax compliance directly, and indirectly through perceived injustice. The path model demonstrates how perceptions of government policy can shape cooperation with government in other spheres.

SUMMARYThis paper investigates the relationship between making additional payments to the state for student loan (via the Higher Education Contribution Scheme) and child support (via the Child Support Scheme) and compliance with tax law. Data are taken from the Community Hopes, Fears, and Actions Survey based on a random sample of 2040 individuals. Additional payments were found to pose a compliance problem for tax authorities. At the same time, this study demonstrated that perceived deterrence, moral obligation and possible trustworthiness play significant roles in reducing tax evasion. An important finding to emerge from this study is that tax evasion is more likely to accompany additional payments when personal income and belief in trust norms are low. The finding of greater tax evasion among economically marginalized groups has been demonstrated in other contexts, but the adverse effects of becoming irreconcilably socially marginalized from legal authority has tended to be both undervalued and under‐theorized in the taxation compliance literature.

This paper investigates the relationship between making additional payments to the state for student loan (via the Higher Education Contribution Scheme) and child support (via the Child Support Scheme) and compliance with tax law. Data are taken from the Community Hopes, Fears, and Actions Survey based on a random sample of 2040 individuals. Additional payments were found to pose a compliance problem for tax authorities. At the same time, this study demonstrated that perceived deterrence, moral obligation and possible trustworthiness play significant roles in reducing tax evasion. An important finding to emerge from this study is that tax evasion is more likely to accompany additional payments when personal income and belief in trust norms are low. The finding of greater tax evasion among economically marginalized groups has been demonstrated in other contexts, but the adverse effects of becoming irreconcilably socially marginalized from legal authority has tended to be both undervalued and under-theorized in the taxation compliance literature.

This study investigated tax morale among a sample of 447 Australian graduates who completed the Graduates Hopes, Visions and Actions Survey (Ahmed, 2000) shortly after receiving their higher education degrees. Using structural equation modeling (AMOS), pathways are mapped out showing linkages from (a) the values that individuals hold concerning the kind of society they want to live in, through (b) satisfaction with government policy requiring students to pay fees financed through a government loan (HECS or the Higher Education Contribution Scheme), to (c) HECS morale, that is, an internalized obligation to repay the loan, and finally to (d) tax morale, that is, an internalized obligation to pay income tax. Also affecting tax morale indirectly are the personal experiences of the new graduates. Those who were dissatisfied with their university course and those who were in the process of repaying their loan were more opposed to HECS and had lower levels of HECS morale, which in turn, adversely affected tax morale.

This paper investigates the relationship between making additional payments to the state for student loan (via the Higher Education Contribution Scheme) and child support (via the Child Support Scheme) and compliance with tax law. Data are taken from the Community Hopes, Fears, and Actions Survey based on a random sample of 2040 individuals. Additional payments were found to pose a compliance problem for tax authorities. At the same time, this study demonstrated that perceived deterrence, moral obligation and possible trustworthiness play significant roles in reducing tax evasion. An important finding to emerge from this study is that tax evasion is more likely to accompany additional payments when personal income and belief in trust norms are low. The finding of greater tax evasion among economically marginalized groups has been demonstrated in other contexts, but the adverse effects of becoming irreconcilably socially marginalized from legal authority has tended to be both undervalued and under-theorized in the taxation compliance literature.

This study investigated tax morale among a sample of 447 Australian graduates who completed the Graduates Hopes, Visions and Actions Survey (Ahmed, 2000) shortly after receiving their higher education degrees. Using structural equation modeling (AMOS), pathways are mapped out showing linkages from (a) the values that individuals hold concerning the kind of society they want to live in, through (b) satisfaction with government policy requiring students to pay fees financed through a government loan (HECS or the Higher Education Contribution Scheme), to (c) HECS morale, that is, an internalized obligation to repay the loan, and finally to (d) tax morale, that is, an internalized obligation to pay income tax. Also affecting tax morale indirectly are the personal experiences of the new graduates. Those who were dissatisfied with their university course and those who were in the process of repaying their loan were more opposed to HECS and had lower levels of HECS morale, which in turn, adversely affected tax morale.