Agents' Risk Relations in a Strategic Tax Reporting

Tax evasion is a classic problem in the field of economics and has been intensively studied over the last few decades. So far, research has been focused, and reasonably followed, on extensions from the original model developed by Alligham and Sandmo (1972). This chapter has taken the initiative to analyse and discuss the behaviour of taxpayers and the relation with risk when they act strategically. In this sense, the authors propose to replicate and discuss the three main conceptual functions of the brain (expressed by Spinoza) when agents do their strategic options concerning tax evasion risk. Output results demonstrate a tendency for strategic taxpayers to first react in detriment of structured and complex reasoning. The assumption, commonly used in tax evasion literature, that taxpayers are exclusively rational, is liable of being refuted. Even the strategic taxpayers are reluctant to follow only their reason.