Tax Culture: A Basic Concept for Tax Politics*

I have suggested not to limit tax-cultural considerations to the side of taxpayers, but to widen its understanding by using an embeddedness approach considering the history of taxation and by that means explicating national tax-cultural diversity (e.g. Nerré 2001b, 2002b, 2006a). In the course of continuing globalization two different kinds of disturbances of tax culture have been identified: tax culture shocks and tax culture lags. Both are due to ignorant and/or ethnocentric policy measures. While lags are caused almost inevitably during any transformation or reform process, shocks should be prevented by implementing appropriate tax political measures on an international (and national!) level in a tax-cultural conform way.