win, tails I win". The theorist I believe best gives explanation to corporate tax evasion is Edwin H. Sutherland. Edwin H. Sutherland was a pioneer in research dealing with White Collar crime in a time when the study of street crime was of primary interest and White Collar crime or corporate deviance was all but ignored. The Differential Association Theory is Edwin H, Sutherlands chief contribution to the study of Sociology. Differential Association is an Interactionist Theory. The theory analyzes the process by which a particular person comes to engage in criminal behavior. The basic principle of Differential Association is that deviance is a learned behavior like all other social behavior. When there is an excess of definitions favorable to deviance or law violation deviance (or in our case, corporate tax evasion) occurs. Differential Association states that criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other persons in a process of communication and that the principal part of the learning of criminal behavior occurs within intimate personal groups. Undoubtedly there can be a connection drawn from the intimate settings where the decisions to commit tax evasion are made and the above state definition. When a people are in small group setting the person inevitably assimilates into the surrounding culture, in this case tax evasion....
