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This article explores taxpayers’ decision-making in the face of an ethical dilemma. The dilemma studied is pressure from tax officials to engage in corruption. Using Kohlberg’s moral development model and a sample of 150 SME entrepreneurs in the city of Douala, Cameroon, we studied the in vitro (cognitive) reasoning and in vivo (actual behavior) reasoning of entrepreneurs. The results show that entrepreneurs have a poor ethical performance and that this underperformance is reinforced by corruption. Furthermore, they show that an entrepreneur with higher tax morale will yield less to bribery by public officials. Finally, they reveal that the impact of corruption on ethical behavior occurs through three negative effects: a distortionary effect, a "social contagion" effect, and a crowding-out effect.