Does political intention affect tax evasion?

For quite sometime, tax evasion has attracted many researchers’ attention in the field of public finance. Not enough attention, however, has been paid to the effects of political factors on tax evasion. This paper intends to provide an economic model of tax evasion, considering the interactions between tax authority and its sovereign government. It shows that tax evasion is influenced by the government's intention to control the economy, controlling for other determinants of tax evasion. The theoretical predictions are examined with annual data from the competitiveness reports published by the IMD and the WEF. The empirical evidence supports the theoretical model to a large extent.