Control of Corruption,Trust in Government,and Voluntary TaxCompliance in South-West,Nigeria

Tax payers’level of compliance behaviour is a major concern to government and tax authorities.Constant losses of tax revenue through bribery,corruption,and abuse of power for personal advantage are perceived to have adversely affected nation’s economic growth and infrastructural development.Many researches have been conducted on taxpayers’compliance,but not many considered the effect of Control of Corruption(COC)in their study.This study looked at the probable influence of COC on individual taxpayers’voluntary tax compliance behaviour in South-West,Nigeria.Survey research design was adopted for the study.Population for the study was 5,216,422 individual taxpayers in three selected states.A validated questionnaire was used to collect data from respondents by means of Stratified and random sampling techniques with a sample size of 1,200 and this gives a response rate of 87.6%.The reliability test using Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranged from 0.79 to 0.86.The study adopts descriptive and inferential statistics to analyze the data at 0.05 level of significance.The study shows that COC positively influenced voluntary tax compliance among individual taxpayers in the study states(Adj.R2=0.063,F(6,1050)=12.68,p=0.000).There was evidence that trust in government,COC,and employment status have significant relationship with voluntary tax compliance behaviour in the study states(β=0.139,t(1044)=6.125,p=0.000,β=0.154,t(1044)=5.025,p=0.000,β=-0.237,t(1044)=-3.562,p=0.00)while gender,age,and educational level do not have significant relationship with voluntary tax compliance(β=0.036,t(1044)=0.664,p=0.664,β=-0.002,t(1044)=-0.080,p=0.936,β=0.035,t(1044)=1.081,p=0.280),respectively.The study concluded that control of corruption influenced individual voluntary tax compliance.Government should put better stiff strategies in controlling corruption on tax matters,overhaul the internal control mechanism,establish state anti-graft agencies,and put stiff punishment for any fraudulent activity on tax revenue generation while zero tolerance to corruption should be seen and practice.

A self-employed taxpayer experimental study on trust,power,and tax compliance in eleven countries

The slippery slope framework explains tax compliance along two main dimensions,trust in authorities and power of authorities,which influence taxpayers’compliance attitudes.Through frequentist and Bayesian analyses,we investigated the framework’s assumptions on a sample of 2786 self-employed taxpayers from eleven post-communist and non-post-communist countries doing business in five economic branches.After using scenarios that experimentally manipulated trust and power,our results confirmed the framework’s assumptions regarding the attitudes of the self-employed taxpayers;trust and power fostered intended tax compliance and diminished tax evasion,trust boosted voluntary tax compliance,whereas power increased enforced tax compliance.Additionally,self-employed taxpayers from post-communist countries reported higher intended tax compliance and lower tax evasion than those from non-post-communist countries.Our results offer tax authorities insights into how trust and power may contribute to obtaining and maintaining high tax compliance levels amid global economic challenges,downturns,and increasing tax compliance costs.

The slippery slope framework:A comprehensive evaluation of factors affecting trust and power

Many empirical studies have been conducted to test the assumptions of the slippery slope framework(SSF).However,although the SSF theory has introduced several tax compliance factors that are believed to have associations with trust in tax authorities and power of tax authorities,most studies tend to include only the two main domains of trust and power in the analysis.None of these studies comprehensively investigates the factors.Therefore,this study is dedicated to fully elaborating on these factors and their correlations with the two main domains of trust and power separately and simultaneously.The results show that most factors are proven to significantly influence trust and power.Tax penalties,norms,distributive fairness and retributive fairness significantly and positively influence trust,while audit probabilities,tax penalties,attitudes,norms and retributive fairness have significant and positive correlations with power.The results also confirm the main SSF assumptions that trust leads to voluntary compliance,while voluntary compliance positively affects overall tax compliance.However,this study fails to demonstrate the relationship of power with enforced compliance,while enforced compliance is found to negatively affect overall tax compliance.