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This chapter applies an “integrative” model to examine the impact and interaction of economic and moral/social factors in the corporate tax compliance context. More specifically, it examines whether social norms moderate the effect of economic factors in this context.

Fifty-five MBA students assumed corporate CFO roles and analyzed a proposed aggressive corporate tax shelter transaction (“tax shelter”). Participants indicated whether they would recommend the tax shelter and answered questions regarding the transaction and their corporate tax compliance views.

Hierarchical Regression results indicate that, in the corporate tax compliance context, decision makers’ norms (moral/social factors) moderate the effect of perceived expected value of aggressive tax transactions (economic factors). More specifically, results indicate that (1) perceived legality of aggressive corporate tax transactions significantly impacts willingness of corporate decision makers to recommend them, even when controlling for perceived economic effect of the transaction, and (2) due to moral/social factors, corporate decision makers often may not support aggressive tax treatments with material positive expected values.

Accordingly, (1) custom and social factors should be integrated into the corporate tax compliance decision-making framework, and (2) campaigns to strengthen corporate tax compliance should focus on the law’s text and intent as well as upon sanctions for noncompliance.

The question of whether the words “American Dream” point to something of substance is at the heart of the authors' inquiry. James Truslow Adams coined the term in his 1933 book The Epic of America as a way to re‐establish a sense of optimism decimated by the Great Depression. Adams' contribution was to move the public discourse from that of individual effort to a sense of a collective identity. The American Dream is an element of the “cultural stuff” whose singularity (“dream”) rapidly breaks down into a variety of interpretations about the American nation (“dreams”). The popular press suggests that the Dream proposes to balance collective membership in a national identity with the individual freedom to achieve prosperity and success. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Dream and the construction of an American identity by examining the accounts of men who surely represent the American Dream: US Presidential candidates.

In order to analyze the candidates' accounts of themselves as committed to their American identity and to the American Dream, the authors view the tax returns and speeches of Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney through the lens of the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan and locate the American Dream as a construct of the imaginary and symbolic orders, as they are defined by Jacques Lacan. The inspirations for the authors' analysis are twofold. One is a 1953 report in which Lacan said, “The unconscious of the subject is the discourse of the other”. The authors argue that the American Dream is the “discourse of the other” and suggest that the American identity is decentered: i.e. a signifying construct (the American Dream) substitutes for identity. The second inspiration is a 2009 paper titled “No one is perfect” by John Roberts, who argues, “The ideal of a transparency pretends to a mere making visible […] [But] transparency works to advertise an ideal against which we will always fail”.

It was found that the candidates' efforts to be transparent advertise an ideal: in this study, the ideal is the ideal of a “perfect‐able” American who lives the American Dream. It is an ideal against which the candidates fail because it is the “discourse of the other”.

This study has limitations. The subjects are two American citizens and the authors' interpretation might not be appropriate to other American citizens and residents.

The authors are aware of no other study that uses Lacanian psychoanalytic views to examine the American Dream.

States that the end of the last century brought dramatic changes in the composition of the workforce and heightened awareness of cultural diversity in the USA. Highlights the need to identify and understand similarities and differences as we move from the “melting pot” concept to ward off the notion of a multicultural society where subcultures exist and function using specific values. Compares attitudes of African Americans and Euro Americans with respect to ten cultural value statements. Discovers significant differences between the two groups.