But taxpayers do cooperate

Income tax paying has often been pictured as a standard example of a real life social dilemma, in the Hardin (1968) tradition, especially in countries where income tax is collected through the procedure of filing tax returns (The Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, and the USA). Filing a taxreturn means that the taxpayer has to reveal his fiscal income to the authorities by completing anincome tax form, while the authorities have the choice of either accepting this declaration and collecting the tax liable over the income as declared, or doing some type of audit, in order to assess the verisimilitude of the declaration. If they then find out that the taxpayer has not compliedwith fiscal rules of income declaration, they will first assess the income correctly, and then collect the tax due - and may indeed apply a fine as well, under certain conditions.

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