An Investigation of Factors Influencing Taxpayers' Compliance Behaviour: Evidence from Nigeria

• Main Author: Alabede, James O.
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: HJ4771.6 Income Tax. Tax Returns.
• Online Access: https://etd.uum.edu.my/3509/1/s92688.pdf; https://etd.uum.edu.my/3509/8/s92688.pdf; https://etd.uum.edu.my/3509/
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

The contribution of income taxes to the total revenue of Nigeria’s government remained consistently low and is relatively shrinking due to low tax compliance. However, from all the taxes, individual income tax remains the most unproductive in Nigerian tax system. Although this noncompliance behaviour can also be explained by the existing theory, the explanation will not be comprehensive because some important variables adhere specifically to Nigeria are not addressed in the existing theory. Thus, this study investigates empirically the factors underlying individual taxpayers’ compliance behaviour in Nigeria to uncover the causes of noncompliance. In order to gain in-depth understanding of the phenomenon, the study expands the tax compliance model to incorporate perceived tax service quality, public governance quality, ethnic diversity as well as moderating effects of personal financial condition and risk preference. The study was designed using taxpayers’ opinion survey method. Multi- stage cluster random sampling technique was applied to select the samples of the study from the population of individual taxpayers residing in the Federal Capital city of Nigeria. The primary data, which were collected through self-administered questionnaire, were treated statistically using multiple regression analysis and other statistical techniques. The results reveal that taxpayers’ perception about tax service quality and public governance quality significantly related to the compliance behaviour. In addition, the effect of taxpayers’ financial condition strengthened the capacity of the compliance model in predicting taxpayers’ behaviour better and significantly moderated the influences of tax system structure, moral reasoning and occupation. By implications, the findings of the study suggests extension to the compliance model to incorporate perceived tax service quality, public governance quality, ethnic diversity and the moderating effect of taxpayers’ financial condition for better understanding of tax compliance behaviour. Furthermore, policy should be directed towards strengthening these factors to reawaken the culture of tax compliance among individual taxpayers in Nigeria.