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This study aims (i) to assess the quest for tax education among working adults that pursuing off‐campus non‐accounting program, (ii) to analyze the level of tax knowledge among the working adults, (iii) to elicit the relevant tax topics to be taught should tax education be integrated into non‐accounting curriculum in higher education. We surveyed 450 working adults pursuing off‐campus non‐accounting program in one Malaysian public university. 190 usable responses were received. The survey found 64 per cent of the respondents were keen to learn taxation, and only 23.7 per cent of the respondents possessed high level of tax knowledge. The topics that they desired to learn the most are basic tax principles, personal taxation, tax planning for individuals and taxation for small business and company. The findings suggest that as we moved into the era of self‐assessment tax system, it is imperative for the accounting academics and the education authorities to seriously consider introducing tax education in non‐accounting curriculum in higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the role of the tax agent as a preparer of tax returns and provider of professional tax advice under a system based on self‐assessment principles. It recognises the competing pressures under which tax agents attempt to discharge their professional responsibilities, and examines the implications for potentially unethical behaviour.

The paper uses a mail survey of tax professionals in Western Australia. Respondents are presented with realistic tax return scenarios, in which the demands of the client are varied according to the risk of audit, the severity of tax law and the materiality of dollar amounts involved.

The findings suggest that the severity of tax law violation is an important factor in ethical decision‐making, but that audit risk and the amounts involved are not.

The lack of support for audit risk as an influential variable is an important outcome, because policy makers have traditionally proceeded on the basis that increases in audit probabilities will reduce the likelihood of taxpayers adopting aggressive tax reporting positions. However, since the findings are based on an Australian sample, care must be taken in generalizing these findings elsewhere.

The implications are important in that alternative enforcement and compliance strategies must be considered by tax administrators.

The paper extends empirical research into taxpayer attitudes to those of the preparers of tax returns. The findings will be of relevance both to tax agents and to tax administrators.

The success of self-assessment tax system is voluntary compliance with the tax laws. When tax evasion is seen as unacceptable, taxpayers will tend to evade tax less. Hence, the understanding of taxpayers’ attitude on tax morality towards a tax system has to be enhanced to minimize tax evasion cases. The purposes of this study are to examine the relationship between tax fairness, tax knowledge, enforcement level and social exchange towards taxpayers’ attitude of tax morality under the self-assessment system in Malaysia and also to identify the relationship between taxpayers’ attitude of tax morality and taxpayers’ perceptions on tax evasion.

Data were collected from 400 taxpayers through a questionnaire and analysed.

From the analysis, it has been found out that tax knowledge is the most important tax system characteristic that affects taxpayers’ attitude of tax morality. In addition, taxpayers’ attitude of tax morality is significant to taxpayers’ perceptions on tax evasion in Malaysia.

The findings of this study would be useful for the government to further improve the present tax system to increase voluntary tax compliance.

The purpose of this paper is to address the question of whether Malaysian public listed companies manage their earnings in response to changes in tax polices. The context of this study is the tax waiver year of 1999 which came about from the introduction of the Self Assessment System (SAS) by the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (IRBM) in the year 2000. If companies are to minimize tax liabilities, then the tax waiver year of 1999 may provide a substantial incentive for these companies to manage earnings in 1999.

The modified Jones Model (adjusted) is used to obtain the discretionary current accruals which represent earnings management. It is hypothesized that there is a significant positive discretionary current accrual (income increasing earnings management) in the tax waiver year of 1999.

The results indicate that that there is a negative relationship between earnings management and the effect of the tax waiver year of 1999. These results suggest that the magnitude of discretionary current accrual is not related to the tax waiver year in a way that is consistent with tax‐motivated income shifting behavior. Instead companies tend to manipulate earnings downwards during severe economic downturn. This is in line with Healy's bonus maximization hypothesis.

The test sample is limited to public listed companies only and some companies are excluded due to insufficient data. Therefore, the results cannot be a representation of Malaysian companies' practices.

The findings of this paper contribute to the sparse literature on tax‐induced earnings management practices in Malaysia. The findings could be of value to the IRBM in designing and improving on the plans for future tax‐based incentive schemes.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the extent to which taxation variables explain differences in fiscal corruption (FISC) across countries.

The study employs an empirical research design, utilizing cross‐country data for all of the relevant variables of interest. The hypotheses of the study are tested using both univariate and multivariate statistical testing approaches.

Based on a sample of 48 countries, and after controlling for economic development (bureaucratic compensation), size of government and democracy, the regression results indicate that the lower the level of tax evasion (TEVA) and tax law complexity (TLAWC), and the higher the level of self‐assessment, the lower is the level of FISC in a country. These regression results remain quite robust after considering many different regression model specifications.

The study has several limitations, including a relatively small country sample size and potential measurement error for several of the variables.

The results of the study could lead to more effective country tax administrations, particularly in terms of tax revenue collection.

This represents one of the first empirical studies to systematically investigate the extent to which taxation variables explain differences in FISC across countries, hence it fills a major gap in the literature about FISC internationally.

The Inland Revenue Board Malaysia has just launched the electronic tax filing system. To date, there has been little scholarly study in examining people’s state of technology readiness. Technology readiness (TR) is defined as people’s propensity to embrace and use new technologies for accomplishing goals in home life and at work (Parasuraman, 2000). Drawing on insights from the literature, this study attempts to adopt the Technology Readiness Index (TRI) of Parasuraman and Colby (2001) in examining the state of technology readiness of tax officers. A survey questionnaire was personally administered on 210 tax officers in Malaysia. A total of 187 usable questionnaires were collected. The survey found that although Malaysian tax officers are optimistic towards new technologies, they experienced a considerable level of discomfort with new technologies. Notably, male tax officers displayed more optimism than their female counterparts. There were no significant differences between gender and age on innovativeness, discomfort and insecurity dimensions. Based on the TRI, the respondents were segmented into explorers (6 per cent), pioneers (39 per cent), skeptics (35 per cent), paranoids (16 per cent) and technology laggards (4 per cent). This study provides timely and useful information for the tax authorities and has implications for tax administration and policy development.

This study examines the determinants of enforced tax compliance behavior of Malaysian citizens where trust in tax authorities is assumed to be a mediator. Quota sampling method was used to select a sample of 340 participants to participate in a survey. A two-step structural equation modeling (SEM) process was adopted to test a framework comprising 13 hypotheses. Model fit was initially measured using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) while model specification was applied in the second stage to test the structural relationship. The mediating effects of trust in tax authorities were tested via Baron and Kenny (1986) approach, bootstrapping, and AMOS AxB estimand. The findings confirmed that trust in government, trust in tax administrator, power of Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia, and awareness influence enforced compliance. However, tax morale and tax amoral behaviors do not influence enforced compliance. The findings suggest that citizens would fulfill their tax responsibilities if they believe that tax authorities are effective in tax administration. Trust in government fosters trust in the tax authorities. This study contributes to existing literature by confirming the factors that affect enforced tax compliance.

This study investigates the tax evasion practices in a lower-middle income economy in South Asia, with specific reference to Bangladesh (which is the only economy within South Asia that had consistent 6% and above gross domestic product (GDP) growth from 2011 to 2013). This study adopted mixed methodology (documentary analyses and a focus group interviews with 20 participants) to reach the overall objective of the research. Using Hofstede et al.’s (2010) cultural theory, the contribution of the study is that the cultural dimension itself cannot correspond to the causes of tax evasion, the other institutional factors (e.g., political connectedness in both private and public sectors, multinational companies (MNC)’s role and corruption, and a lack of public sector accountability and enforcement) are needed to complement the causes of tax evasion. The second major contribution is that Hofstede’s last two dimensions (i.e., short-term and restraint society) can correspond to the preliminary four dimensions (i.e., uncertainty avoidance (UA), masculinity, power distance (PD), and individualism). A restraint society such as Bangladesh is short-term oriented and has established corruption norms and secretive culture. There is also a perception by corporate business that the tax system as unfair and this has major consequences for the poor and the level of trust between the tax authorities and the taxpayers. This study also questions Hofstede’s model application in other developing economies with military and democracy political regimes. The major policy implications include Income Tax Ordinance, the reform of tax administration and enforcement. The novelty of this study rests in the fact that the findings may well inform local and international policymakers (e.g., World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the Asian Development Bank (ADB)) regarding how to tackle tax evasion practices in lower-middle income economies like Bangladesh. Further, it fills a gap in the literature exploring tax evasion in a lower-middle income economy – in this case, Bangladesh.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between political connections and corporate tax aggressiveness in Malaysia. In addition, this paper investigates the relationship between corporate governance variables and corporate tax aggressiveness. Next, the study investigates the mitigating role of corporate governance in the relationship between political connections and corporate tax aggressiveness.

The sample of this study is based on 2,538 firm-year observations during the 2000-2009 periods. This study employs a panel least square regression with both period and industry fixed effects. The study retrieved the corporate governance variables from the downloaded annual reports, whilst the remaining data were collected from Compustat Global.

This study finds that politically connected firms are more tax aggressive than non-connected firms. Furthermore, the study finds that large board size decreases the likelihood of tax aggressiveness and a non-linear relationship exists between institutional ownership and tax aggressiveness suggesting increase in monitoring as the ownership increases. However, the study finds no evidence to suggest that corporate governance mitigates the influence of political connections in promoting tax aggressiveness behavior. The findings suggest that the impact of political connections could outweigh the benefits of changes in corporate governance in Malaysia.

The data are not recent, but it reflects a rather longitudinal research period.

This paper extends the literature of tax research in Malaysia which is in its’ infancy stage. Furthermore, it investigates the role of political connections in tax-planning research.

This paper aims to explore factors influencing the effectiveness of tax audit in Tanzania. The study organized factors into four categories: organizational-related, tax auditors-related, taxpayers-related and regulatory-related factors.

The study used an explanatory approach, whereby data from 225 auditors in 23 tax regions in Tanzania were collected using a mailed questionnaire. The questionnaire had 25 statements representing factors and 5 statements representing the tax audit effectiveness. The collected data were analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. In the case of descriptive statistics, the study used frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. For the inferential statistics, the study used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and multiple regression analysis.

The study findings showed that there were five main critical factors for tax audit effectiveness. The first factor, which is the implementation of tax auditors’ recommendations by management, was found under the organizational category. The second factor, which was adequacy of tax audit unit, was found under the tax auditors’ category, while the third factor was taxpayers’ attitude, found under the taxpayers’ category. The fourth and fifth factors, which were availability and application of regulations and standards for tax audit, and leadership and tax policies for tax audit, respectively, were found under the regulatory category.

Despite the contributions of this study, there are some limitations which need to be acknowledged. First, data were collected from tax auditors only. Second, only 25 statements for factors were used. Third, the study has used only primary data. Last, the study has used perceptual measures of tax audit effectiveness. The authors consider that if other approaches were used, they could have reached different conclusions. Therefore, future studies could be conducted in the areas where limitations have been identified.

From a practical perspective, tax authorities may be relying heavily on tax auditors, as well as regulations and policies, for tax audit effectiveness. The study shows that taxpayers, management, as well as tax audit standards, are critical factors too. However, the study also has practical implications for governments, tax authorities, tax auditors as well taxpayers.

This paper extends prior research in the area of tax audit and is the first paper to use four categories of factors to analyse the influence of tax audit effectiveness, taking into consideration both tax authorities and taxpayers. It also used EFA, which helped to generate variables with multiple prior theories (i.e. theoretical triangulation). Hence, new theories were combined with old theories to produce findings which take into consideration the context of the country.