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Even as governments worldwide take extraordinary measures and spend unprecedented amounts of their state budgets to combat COVID-19, tax compliance remains challenging. Therefore, this study employs previously identified predictors to investigate the factors that persuade individual taxpayers to comply with the law.

Individual taxpayers in Indonesia (N = 699) who had experienced COVID-19-related benefits were asked to assess the provided evaluation regarding the tax compliance intention and its determinants. The bootstrapping analysis was employed using smart partial least squares (SmartPLS) to test the hypotheses.

The results suggest that the perceived fiscal exchange, tax morality, tax fairness, tax complexity and the power of authority are significant determinants of tax compliance intention. This study also supports the indirect effects of numerous factors on tax compliance intention through the perceived fiscal exchange and tax morality. In practice, reminding taxpayers of how tax payments fund public services, improving taxpayer morale, increasing the perceived fairness of the tax system, streamlining the tax code and managing the effectiveness of tax administration could all lead to a greater intention to comply with the law.

In addition to highlighting the dynamics of tax compliance amid the unprecedented pandemic crisis, our findings also provide insight into the importance of perceived fiscal exchange and tax morality for achieving and sustaining planned behavior to comply with tax rules.

This paper aims to explore the role of religiosity in determining taxpayers’ attitudes towards tax compliance and discusses likely explanations for the findings in the context of the literature.

A sequential exploratory mixed-methods research design was used in this study. Data were collected using a self-administered survey which involved approximately 300 individual taxpayers in Malaysia, followed by face-to-face interviews with 14 individual taxpayers. Majority of the respondents in both survey and interviews were salaried taxpayers, and the remaining were self-employed taxpayers.

Religiosity is found to have a minimal but statistically significant positive impact on voluntary tax compliance. This probably can be explained by the strong religious values held by many Malaysians, as well as the concept of giving which has been emphasised in almost all religions.

Because this study did not differentiate between religious values and moral values in measuring the source of respondents’ internal values, there was a possibility that their internal values may be derived from both sources. Hence, comparing the impact of individuals’ religious values with individuals’ moral values that have no influence from religion on tax compliance is suggested for future research.

A new mechanism is suggested to the Malaysian tax authority in regards to the treatment of religious payment to reduce the sense of inequality among citizens and taxpayers.

This study enriches the limited literature of tax compliance from the perspective of developing countries, particularly Malaysia, and adds to the limited literature internationally from a religiosity perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the relationship between perceived grounds for tax non-compliance or compliance behaviors and perceived tax compliance factors.

The study employed a correlational and cross-sectional survey design seeking to understand tax compliance by taxpayers’ perceptions in Uganda. Data from 205 respondents to the questionnaire were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Scientists and structural equation modeling with analysis of moment structures.

Governmental effectiveness, transparent tax system (TTS) and voice and accountability (VA) are perceived grounds for tax compliance or non-tax compliance and, as indicators of tax administration significantly influence variances in tax compliance. Tax compliance in Uganda is indicated by perceived worth and distribution of public expenditure (WDPE), level of taxation, inequalities in the tax system and tax evasion.

No distinction is made between actual and potential taxpayers. Still, the results can contribute to our understanding of tax compliance puzzle from the behavioral angle. Factors such as perceived WDPE indicate a taxpayer’s compliance decision and factors such as governmental effectiveness explain that decision. Additional government policy requirements beyond greater enforcement actions by the tax authorities should be cultivated.

Results contribute to extending the basic tax effort model by establishing the extent to which VA, TTS and governmental effectiveness (GEF) matter in a developing country context. The study presents tax compliance as a taxpayer’s decision that is informed by perceptions and shows that factors increasing the taxpayers’ perceptions about VA and GEF relate to the importance that their perceptions have in their tax compliance decisions.

This study aims to investigate the certainty of small business (SB) taxpayers about the presumptive tax law concerning the assessment of income tax based on gross turnover and how this impacts their income tax compliance.

The study adopted the exploratory research design. The saturation point was attained upon interviewing nine owners of SB enterprises, eight tax officers from the Uganda Revenue Authority and eight tax consultants. Themes were identified and explained using verbatim texts from the various interviews. Data were analyzed using the content analysis technique.

The findings indicate that SB taxpayers are uncertain about the nature of the presumptive tax, that it is assessed based on annual sales, indicators used to determine gross turnover and their actual tax liability. This has occasioned resistance to the tax system and inhibited voluntary compliance. SB taxpayers thus opt to wait for the tax officers to make tax assessments. However, they have used this opportunity to bribe or bargain with tax officers to pay low amounts in tax or no tax at all. Thus, policymakers and revenue authorities ought to concentrate on creating massive sensitization of the law on presumptive tax, in this case, the existing tax base on which the tax is imposed and its elements to improve income tax compliance of SBs.

These results are relevant to policymakers and Revenue authorities in developing countries, especially in Africa, in improving income tax compliance of SBs.

This study examines the contribution of certainty of the income tax law on the tax base (gross turnover) on which presumptive tax is imposed to income tax compliance of SBs, which has hardly been covered in previous studies.

This paper examines the relationship between the procedural tax administration system and the characteristics of the decision-maker in the decision to comply with the tax code. Specifically, we examine the motor fuel tax system. The motor fuel tax system requires an organization to collect and remit taxes at both the federal and state levels. Using a path model, we find that the procedural complexity of the tax system contributes to an increase in tax non-compliance.

This paper aims to analyze the role of spiritual, psychological and social dimensions of business taxpayer compliance in micro small and medium enterprises. Tax compliance is an ideal condition for taxpayers who meet tax regulations and report income accurately and honestly. However, the reality in Indonesia shows the voluntary compliance level to the community is still low. This is reflected in the amount of state tax revenue compared to gross domestic product.

The location of the study was conducted on taxpayers of micro small and medium enterprises in Bali Province. The type of data used in this study is quantitative data with primary data sources in the form of questionnaires to 100 business taxpayers. Data analysis uses multiple linear regression.

The results showed that money ethics (as a psychological dimension) and tax socialization (as a social dimension), did not significantly influence tax compliance. Karma phala (as a spiritual dimension) has a positive and significant effect on business taxpayers’ compliance. When an individual's behavior has reflected commitment in their religion philosophy, it is expected to be a control of deviant behavior and good behavior in taxation obligations. In the future, it will be able to prevent deviations from perversion and universal undesirable.

Research is only limited to entrepreneurs who are in the micro small and medium business sector, so it is still lacking in representing the public opinions, especially business people in businesses whose scope is wider. In addition, the variables used in this study are still not maximized, one can add more variables, one of which is tax modernization.

Consideration of spirituality dimension use because it is part of individual character formation in attitude and behavior. The psychological and spiritual dimensions include the human behavior theories development that integrate aspects of spirituality to shape human behavior as a whole with a comprehensive perspective, especially religious philosophy through the enforcement of karma phala laws to realize compliance and fulfillment of tax obligations with full responsibility.

This study investigates whether consideration of future consequences (CFC), Machiavellianism (MACH) and the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility (PRESOR) enhance understanding of the impact of tax audit risk on compliance.

A between-subjects experiment is conducted to test the hypotheses. A hypothetical tax audit case (or lack thereof) is used to create a high (low) perceived tax audit risk. The usable responses of 144 participants representing the general taxpayer population are analyzed.

The results suggest that taxpayers with lower CFC, MACH or PRESOR scores are more compliant when tax audit risk is high than low. In contrast, taxpayers with higher CFC, MACH or PRESOR scores are indifferent toward high or low tax audit risk.

Research can elicit consideration of future consequences of being detected for taxpayers with lower CFC scores to increase compliance. Additionally, increased saliency of tax audit risk and detection of noncompliance in a tax audit can enhance the compliance of taxpayers with lower MACH scores. Dissemination of information via social media on the value of ethical and social responsibility of compliance can also increase the compliance of taxpayers with higher PRESOR scores.

This study helps researchers and the tax authority better understand the complexities of compliance and the ethical dilemmas that taxpayers face, especially when a considerable amount of cash income is involved. To deter underreporting of cash income, the tax authority can use social media to explain how data analytics tools can facilitate the analysis and integration of multiple sources of a taxpayer’s income and expenses.

Prior studies present participants with objective tax audit rates, such as 5, 25 and 30 (Cullis et al., 2006; Maciejovsky et al., 2007; Trivedi et al., 2003) or 50% (Maciejovsky et al., 2012) to investigate tax compliance. However, the actual tax audit rate is very low (about 1%) due to the limited resources of the tax authority (Alm and Torgler, 2011). To attenuate perceptions of unrealistic tax audit rates, this study operationalizes high (low) tax audit risk via a hypothetical tax audit case (or lack thereof) to examine the impact of tax audit risk on compliance.

This paper aims to investigate the role of cognitive moral development (CMD) in tax compliance decision. In particular, the study compares tax compliance degree in two different tax systems: synergistic and antagonistic tax climates.

Build on the CMD theory, this study uses a paper and pencil laboratory experiment that involved 157 participants to test the hypotheses.

CMD has significant contribution to the tax compliance decision, especially for taxpayers at both the pre-conventional and conventional level. Taxpayers who have achieved post-conventional level, however, do not shift their compliance degree even when the tax climate changed. The present results support the CMD theory.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is the first to investigate the role of CMDin tax compliance decision by comparing two different tax systems: synergistic and antagonistic tax climates. This study has theoretical and practical contributions. From theoretical perspective, the findings provide evidence that CMD influence tax compliance decision-making processes. In the practical terms, this research may provide a deep insight on the important of government and tax authorities to improve the taxpayers’ moral cognitive, e.g. through any activities which aims to boost them to the level of post-conventional.

To better understand the issues on compliance and ethics in taxation, this paper reviews and discusses the extant literature with a focus on individual taxpayers. As prior studies mainly provide tax compliance and ethics information in the USA, this paper attempts to explore similar issues in a non‐US economy by articulating real‐life perspectives of tax compliance behavior in Hong Kong.

The first part of this study undertakes an extensive review of literature on compliance and ethics in taxation. The second part of this study provides real‐life perspectives of tax compliance behavior for individual taxpayers by examining three informal tax cases in Hong Kong.

The first major finding from literature review is that ethical beliefs could be an effective means to improve tax compliance, particularly for taxpayers with lower levels of moral development. Secondly, as tax compliance rate is higher when taxpayer has a stronger moral belief that tax evasion is not ethical, a stronger enforcement effort might have a positive overall effect on tax compliance.

In Hong Kong, there is a lack of general ethics education for the public. The authors therefore suggest the introduction of general ethics education for all citizens in Hong Kong to enhance level of moral development in order to improve tax compliance at large.

The examination of the actions of taxpayers provides insightful information on tax compliance and ethics issues as prior research suggests that ethics ultimately lies in actions and hence actions should be used to study the ethical development.

The purpose of the study is to analyse social and demographic factors that affect tax stamp compliance in Upper Denkyira East Municipal and Upper Denkyira West District in Ghana.

The study adopted a cross-sectional survey design to sample 783 micro-taxpayers through the use of multi-stage sampling technique. Primary data were collected from micro-taxpayers by using a structured interview. Ordered logit regression model was used to regress the extent of tax stamp compliance on socio-demographic factors in relation to tax stamp cases in the study area.

The study found that occupational association status, location, gender, type of business operated, age, level of education and household size are significant predictors of tax stamp compliance in the study area.

The originality of the study is in twofold. First, the study dwells on extant literature on social and demographic factors of tax compliance in general and specifically applies them to a special kind of presumptive tax, tax stamp, in Ghana. The study is also considered as the first of its kind to perform rigorous statistical analysis of social and demographic factors in relation to tax compliance.