Selfish Sharing? The Impact of the Sharing Economy on Tax Reporting Honesty
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Selfish Sharing? The Impact of the Sharing Economy on Tax Reporting Honesty Leslie Berger1 · Lan Guo1 · Tisha King1 Received: 8 March 2019 / Accepted: 16 December 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract In the last decade, advances in technology have significantly disrupted the way firms provide goods and services. At the forefront of this technological disruption is the sharing economy, where individuals earn income by providing services or sharing assets through peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms. With global revenues in the sharing economy projected to increase substantially in the next decade, income from this economy will continue to be an important source of tax revenues for governments around the world. However, sceptics argue that the sharing economy inherently lends itself to dishonest reporting of taxable income. We employ an online experiment, using 746 taxpayers, to observe whether the prosocial benefits often promoted by P2P platforms reduce honest reporting of taxable sharing economy income. Consistent with moral licensing theory, we find that earning income from a prosocial-oriented P2P platform liberates taxpayers to dishonestly report their sharing economy income, and this result is fully driven by taxpayers whose personal values are incongruent with values promoted by the P2P platform. Our paper contributes to the limited but growing research on the sharing economy and its implications for ethical decisions. It also adds to the moral licensing literature by identifying value congruency as an important moderator for moral licensing effect. Keywords Sharing economy · Tax reporting honesty · Moral self-licensing · Prosocial · Value congruence
Introduction In the last decade, advances in technology have significantly disrupted the way firms provide goods and services. At the forefront of this disruption is the sharing economy, which uses technology to enable individuals to earn income by providing services with, or sharing the use of, their assets through peer-to-peer (P2P) online platforms.1 P2P platforms use their technical advantage to disrupt how traditional services are offered to individuals. For instance, Uber provides real-time, location-based ride-sharing and integrates advanced technological features including face detection software to increase user safety and protect against fraud * Leslie Berger [email protected] Lan Guo [email protected] Tisha King [email protected] 1
Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada
(Microsoft 2016), and Airbnb uses artificial intelligence to enhance matching and user experience in short-term accommodations (Airbnb 2018). As these technology platforms develop, revenues generated from P2P online platforms are consistently increasing. With global revenues in the sharing economy projected to increase from US$15 billion in 2015 to US$335 billion by 2025 (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2015), income from this economy will continue to be an important source of tax revenues for governments around the world. Howe
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