Research Projects and Surveys

Community Perceptions of Tax Justice

Fairness is an important value that all Australians share. In the community surveys, people repeatedly wrote to us questioning the fairness of the system.

We found that fairness had different meanings to different people; some people spoke of procedural fairness in how they were treated by the Tax Office and the tax system, others spoke of the fairness in how much tax they had to pay - compared to others earning about the same as them, or compared to those who earned a lot more money than they did. Fairness also was part of how the Tax Office dealt with people who were breaking the law - were they being allowed to get away with things that they should have been punished for?

In order to find out about what penalties Australians thought should apply to those evading tax, and what aspects of the system were particularly unfair to Australians, a survey was conducted in 2002 called The What's Fair and What's Unfair Survey about Justice Issues in the Australian Tax Context.

Chief Investigators

Dr Michael Wenzel
Dr Tina Murphy

Data Set

The What's Fair and What's Unfair Survey about Justice Issues in the Australian Tax Context (The Justice Survey)
(codebook full version pdf)

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