Jonathan Farrar

I use primarily surveys and experiments to understand decisions individuals can make related to income taxes (such as tax reporting compliance decisions, whistleblowing decisions to tax authorities, and savings in tax-advantaged accounts like RRSPs, TFSAs, and FHSAs). This area of research is known as behavioural tax due to its behavioural methodologies (surveys and experiments).

In the past, using archival data (tax court records), I investigated several psychological phenomena that could have influenced judges at tax courts.

I am starting projects about consumers' willingness to pay for carbon tax and the extent to which investors use corporate tax information. I am also learning how to do qualitative tax research and will be interviewing tax professionals about how they develop interpersonal trust with their clients.

I am always looking for enthusiastic and ambitious graduate students who wish to do tax research, especially behavioural tax research.

• Farrar, J., Hageman, A., & Okafor, O. (2026). Global justice and tax compliance intentions. Forthcoming, Behavioral Research in Accounting.
  
  
• Tuxhorn, K-L., Farrar, J., James, O., & Wunderlich, J. (2026). Mapping public attitudes toward taxation: A cross-national study of fiscal citizenship. Forthcoming, Canadian Tax Journal.
  
  
• Farrar, J., & Mehmi, H. (2026). The ethics of tax adjudication: Initial evidence on the name-letter effect in judicial decision-making. Forthcoming, Accounting and the Public Interest. https://doi.org/10.2308/API-2025-001 
   
• Farrar, J., Farrar, T., & Mehmi, H. (2025). Are judges influenced by dollar amounts? Evidence from tax law. Dalhousie Law Journal, 48(2). https://digitalcommons.schulichlaw.dal.ca/dlj/vol48/iss2/5 
  
  

• Farrar, J., & Mehmi, H. (2024). The association between fairness and judicial decision-making: Evidence from tax law. Florida Tax Review, 27(2), 586-611. https://doi.org/10.5744/ftr.2024.2004

• Marshall, M., Farrar, J., Massey, D., Thorne, L., Wu, A., & Bui, T. (2024). In all fairness: A meta-analysis of the tax fairness-tax compliance literature. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 36(2): 105-130. https://doi.org/10.2308/BRIA-2022-040.

• Farrar, J., & King, T. (2024). Using retributive justice to ensure public trust in Canada’s tax system. Canadian Tax Journal, 72(1): 83-93. DOI: https://doi.org/10.32721/ctj.2024.72.1.pf.farrar

• Farrar, J., Farrar, T., Hausserman, C., & Rennie, M. (2024). An investigation of the influence of guilt, awards, and a moral message on tax whistleblowing decisions. Advances in Taxation, 31: 135-163. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1058-749720240000031005

• Berger, L., Farrar, J., Zhang, L., & Andrejkow, J. (2023). A behavioural investigation of the substitution phenomenon between tax-sheltered savings plans. Behavioural Public Policy. https://doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2023.16

• Berger, L., Farrar, J., Pogacar, R., & Zhang, L. (2023). Tax-free: Investigating how a heuristic in the TFSA name biases savings preferences for the RRSP. Canadian Tax Journal, 71(1): 1-32.

• Farrar, J., & King, T. (2023). To punish or not to punish? The impact of tax fraud punishment on observers’ tax compliance. Journal of Business Ethics, 183(1): 289-311. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05061-w

• BU357: Taxation I (personal tax)
• BU466: Taxation II (corporate tax)
• BU557: Graduate Diploma integrative tax course

• 8 SSHRC grants

• House of Commons, Standing Committee on Finance, witness for 'Use of Offshore Tax Havens' session (November 3, 2025). Online: https://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2?fk=13208395 [12:01:25] 
• CBC News (April 4, 2025): Panama Papers leak
• Globe & Mail (January 31, 2025): TFSAs are wildly popular. But is it just because of great branding?