Diffusion of responsibility: my accountant will tell me if it’s right or wrong
Yesterday on Marketplace, Kai Ryssdal interviewed Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist and author of Predictably Irrational about why some people are tempted to cheat on their taxes. Ariely pointed out that people who do their own taxes are less likely to cheat than if they have someone do it for them. Here’s why:
It turns out that if you do it yourself, you kinda feel morally responsible. But if somebody else is eventually going to sign, and you leave it to somebody else’s discretion, now you feel, ah, let me try this thing, and the accountant will tell me if it’s right or wrong. And it’s basically what we call diffusion of responsibility.
Mark R. Leary, one of Ariely’s colleagues at Duke University explains why people try to justify their behavior this way:
With this excuse, the person argues that responsibility for the event was shared by a number of people and thus, he or she was not as responsible as might first appear. ‘œYes, I helped soap the car windows on Halloween, but seven other people did it too so it’s not all my fault.’
Later, Ariely followed up with a post on his blog about how he thinks the IRS could decrease cheating:
My suggestion is to have the first question on the tax form asking us if we want to contribute $25 to a task force to fight cheating and corruption. The people who would say ‘œyes’ to this question would have committed themselves, and some money, toward honesty ‘” and it is likely that they would continue behaving more ethically while filling in the rest of the tax form. And for the people who answer ‘œno’? Maybe they should be audited.
What do you think? Happy Tax Day!
Image credit: PredictablyIrrational.com.
Eh, I always find stories like this very dumb.
I run a small business, and I totally understand how mistakes are made in your taxes, easily. Just because you (or your accountant) make mistakes doesn’t mean you’re “cheating.”
OK – I can see this guy’s point about cheating and trying to pass the buck onto the accountant. In fact, I’ve known people who got audited because their accountant was the one playing funky math on their returns. But as far as a task force and the $25 contribution, I’m gonna vote no. The IRS already gets taxpayer money to do this.
This is what might keep Wesley Snipes from going to prison…he’s blaming his accountants.
But you know what….you’re still supposed to sign the form and I’d NEVER sign something I haven’t read.
The Freakonomics guys had a good article in the New York Times about cheating a couple of years ago:
Click here to read.