There was a two-fold purpose in writing this paper. The first purpose was to discover how the populations of Moldova and Romania view tax evasion and whether opinions vary based on demographics. The second purpose, which may be more interesting from a sociological and political perspective, was whether opinions differ between countries. What is now Moldova was a part of Romania before the Soviets took it over and included it into the Soviet Union. The paper analyzes whether, after two generations of Soviet rule, attitude towards tax evasion in Moldova had become different from that in Romania. The study found that overall Romanians are more opposed to tax evasion than the Moldovans. The study found that certain demographics made a difference while other demographic factors did not, which has implications for the public finance literature in general. Gender did not make a significant difference in attitude towards tax evasion in either country; Romanians become more opposed to tax evasion as they get older, but Moldovans in the age group of 30-49 are more opposed to tax evasion than the younger and older age groups; the most educated people of Moldova are more opposed to tax evasion than the other two groups, but the middle education group in Romania is less opposed to tax evasion than the lower and upper education group; and married people oppose tax evasion more than the single people do in both the countries. Although the research is limited to Moldova and Romania, one could extrapolate that attitudes in former Soviet Republics might closely mirror those of Moldova and attitudes of former Soviet Bloc countries might closely mirror those of Romania, although any such conclusion must be tentative and subject to further research. This is the first study of its kind that has been done to compare the attitude towards tax evasion in Moldova and Romania.

Although much has been written about tax evasion from the perspective of public finance, not many studies have focused on the ethical aspects of tax evasion. One of the most comprehensive early studies on the ethics of tax evasion was done by Crowe (1944), a Catholic priest who surveyed the philosophical and religious (mostly Catholic) literature that had been written over the previous five centuries. Crowe found that three basic positions had emerged over the centuries. Tax evasion was considered to be: never ethical, always ethical or ethical under certain facts and circumstances.

More recent studies were done by McGee (1994 and 1998a) and Torgler (2003). The McGee studies examined the philosophical and ethical literature but did not conduct empirical investigations. Torgler's study was mostly empirical and did not examine the philosophical and ethical literature in depth.

Although there are very few philosophical studies on the ethics of tax evasion, the ones that exist span all three viewpoints. Block (1989 and 1993) surveyed the public finance literature but failed to find any adequate explanations or arguments to justify taxation. McGee (1994) applied Spooner's (1870) philosophy to the issue of tax evasion, which challenged the social contract theories of Hobbes (1651), Locke (1689) and Rousseau (1762).

At the other end of the spectrum, a few philosophical studies concluded that tax evasion is never justified. The literature of the Baha'i religion strictly prohibits tax evasion, the main argument being that individuals have a duty to obey the laws of the country in which they live (DeMoville, 1998). A study on the Mormon religious literature also reached the same conclusion and for the same reason (Smith and Kimball, 1998).

Public Finance Journal, Tax Evasion, Moldova, Romania, Public Finance Literatures, Empirical Investigations, Philosophical Literatures, International Business, Demographic Variables, Educational Categories, Governmental Authorities, Business Ethics, Tax Morale.