TESTING ASSUMPTIONS OF THE “SLIPPERY SLOPE FRAMEWORK” USING CROSS-COUNTRY DATA: EVIDENCE FROM SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

The emergence of “Slippery Slope Framework” has attracted many researchers who examined the effect of trust in authorities and power of authorities on tax compliance using both the real taxpayer and student subjects. However, these researchers have neglected the use of cross-country data to examine these effects. In line with prior empirical evidences that confirm the effect of trust and power of authorities on tax compliance, this study hypothesizes that both trust and power have association with tax compliance across countries. It further hypothesizes that trust has more association with tax compliance than power. This study is based on 49 Sub-Saharan African countries as the population, out of which 37 countries were selected using multi-stage random sampling. The empirical results from these countries reveal that there is an association between both trust in authorities and power of authorities and tax compliance across the 37 Sub-Saharan African countries, but the association between power of authorities and tax compliance is stronger than that of trust in authorities and tax compliance. Further, the result does not find any causing effect of both trust and power on tax compliance in the countries that constituted the study sample.Keywords: Authorities; Compliance; Power; Tax; Trust.