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Since its introduction in South Africa during 2009, the ability of vehicle emissions tax to reduce CO₂ emissions has been questioned, but not yet assessed. The purpose of this paper is to attempt such an assessment by considering tax designs to reduce passenger vehicle CO₂ emissions.

In this exploratory study, the authors reviewed literature on tax designs to reduce CO₂ emissions, and compared the design of current taxes on passenger vehicles in South Africa to the tax designs most advocated in the literature to evaluate the effectiveness of the current South African design for this purpose.

Tax designs refer to the stage when taxes are levied (purchase/ownership/usage taxes) – levying taxes at one stage may more effectively reduce emissions than levying them at another. The current tax focus on consumers may indeed affect taxes' ability to reduce emissions, and in the current tax mix, taxes on passenger vehicles may not be the most effective way of reducing emissions. The investigation of a “feebate” policy as an alternative initiative to address increased passenger vehicle CO₂ emissions is recommended.

Only anecdotal evidence questions the ability of the vehicle emissions tax to reduce CO₂ emissions. This study is intended to elicit further discussions on other fiscal reform initiatives aimed at reducing CO₂ emissions by passenger vehicles in South Africa.

Adopting agency theory, the purpose of this study is to explore the impact of ownership structure and board of directors’ composition on the extent of tax avoidance strategies.

The sample included all of the Jordanian first market companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange from 2012 to 2017, comprising 348 observations.

The main finding of the paper is that tax avoidance is negatively related to managerial and institution ownership structures, which reduces the usage of tax avoidance strategies. Foreign ownership, however, has a positive relation that increases the likelihood of adopting tax avoidance strategies.

This study has policy implications for policymakers in relation to designing future tax systems to reduce the possibility of engaging in tax avoidance practices.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind that investigates the effects of the managerial, foreign and institutional ownership classes and board composition on tax avoidance for Jordanian listed companies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the direct and indirect relationship between institutional ownership and corporate tax avoidance using corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a mediating variable.

This study uses panel data set of 200 French firms listed during the 2007–2018 period. The direct and indirect effects between managerial ownership and tax avoidance were tested by using structural equation model analysis.

The results indicate that institutional ownership negatively affects tax avoidance. The greater the proportion of the institutional ownership, the lower the likelihood of tax avoidance usage. From the result of the Sobel test, this study indicated that CSR partially mediates the effect of institutional ownership on corporate tax avoidance.

The findings have some policy and practical implications that may help regulators in improving the quality of transactions and in achieving more efficient market supervision. They recommend to the government to add regulations and restrictions to the structure of corporate ownership to control corporate tax avoidance in French companies.

This study extends the existing literature by examining both the direct and indirect effect of institutional ownership on corporate tax avoidance in French companies by including CSR as a mediating variable.

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 study the impact of tax avoidance on corporate risk. It also examines the moderating impact of tax risk on the relationship between tax avoidance and firm risk.

Based on available information in the DATASTREAM database about a sample of French firms listed in the CAC 40 from 2010 to 2022, the study uses the feasible generalized least squares method to investigate the impact of tax avoidance on firm risk and the moderating impact of tax risk. To check the robustness of our results, the authors changed the measurement of variables to identify potential biases and they significantly mitigated the endogeneity concerns using instrumental variable regression. Additional estimations were performed, first by using book-tax differences (BTD) and its components, i.e. temporary and permanent, and second by retesting hypotheses of years before the outbreak of the corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

The results show that tax avoidance negatively affects the firm risk while tax risk has a positive effect on firm risk. More importantly, tax risk moderates the negative impact of tax avoidance on the firm risk. When tax avoidance is associated with a high level of tax risk, it leads to a high firm risk. Accordingly, tax avoidance should be considered in conjunction with tax risk when studying the effect put on the firm risk. Further analyses indicate that tax risk moderates the negative relationship between permanent BTD and firm risk.

The major limitation of this study is that it focuses only on French-listed firms, which make it difficult to generalize the results. Furthermore, the authors did not introduce governance variables into our models. An effective governance system and transparent information can reduce some of the perverse effects of risky tax avoidance by reducing the tax avoidance costs. The obtained results are of great interest to researchers who need to include the tax risk concept in their examination of the tax avoidance impacts.

The results are useful for investors wishing to make sound decisions regarding risky tax avoidance practices. Furthermore, the results may signal the need for French policymakers to make more efforts to reduce risky tax avoidance activities that are harmful to investors. They must enforce the existence and the reporting of a tax risk management strategy by firms.

This study contributes to the growing body of literature on the tax avoidance effects with a special focus on firm risk. This study provides the first French evidence of the role of tax risk in the relationship between tax avoidance and firm risk.

The aim of this paper is to examine how managerial ability affects corporate tax aggressiveness.

The study follows the work of Demerjian, Lev, and McVay (2012) and quantifies managerial ability by calculating how efficiently managers generate revenues from given economic resources using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. The study uses a wide range of measures of tax aggressiveness. Firm fixed-effects regressions and a difference-in-differences approach using information regarding CEO turnover to control for endogeneity are used.

The study finds a negative relationship between managerial ability and corporate tax aggressiveness. Further tests show that this negative relationship is more pronounced for firms with higher investment opportunities or firms with more reputational concerns.

Given the significant costs associated with tax aggressiveness and the negative effect it can have on managerial reputation if discovered, the results suggest that more able managers invest less effort in aggressive tax avoidance activities. This study furthers the understanding of how managerial personal traits affect corporate decision-making.

Premised on the assertion that financial digitalization is currently the panacea and game changer in delivering progress towards the sustainable development goals (SDGs) through universal financial inclusion, especially in developing countries, the purpose of this paper is to establish the moderating effect of transaction tax exemptions in the relationship between mobile money adoption and usage and financial inclusion.

A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 379 micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which use mobile money services drawn from the Northern District of Gulu in Uganda to provide responses for this study. The predictive relevancy and the effect size of the model were determined by running partial least square algorithm through structural equation model (SEM) with 5,000 bootstrap samples in SmartPLS-SEM 3.0.

The findings indicated that all the latent variables of transaction tax exemptions showed significant and positive impact on mobile money adoption and usage to advance financial inclusion in developing countries. Moreover, when combined together, the overall SEM predictive model revealed a significant moderating effect of transaction tax exemptions in the relationship between mobile money adoption and usage and financial inclusion. This implies that transaction tax exemptions on digital financial innovations such as the mobile money services can stimulate economic growth through increased level of financial inclusion labeled as the main enabler in achieving the SDGs by the year 2030.

Whereas data were collected from users of mobile money services, the samples were drawn specifically from MSMEs’ owners located in the Northern District of Gulu in Uganda. Thus, users located in other districts were not included in the sample for this study. Similarly, this study limited itself to only financial services offered through the mobile money platform. It ignored other digital financial channels such as the internet and electronic banking.

Going forward, in order to improve the economic well-being of households at the “bottom of the pyramid,” governments in developing countries should embrace the significant role of transaction tax exemptions in promoting digital financial innovations such as the mobile money services for increased level of financial inclusion. The governments in developing countries where mobile money has greatly spurred financial inclusion should not only reduce the existing transaction taxes on mobile money services but scrap it off in order to champion progressive increase in the level of universal financial inclusion prescribed as a key enabler in eliminating global poverty, especially in developing countries.

This study hints on the moderating effect of transaction tax exemptions in the relationship between mobile money adoption and usage and financial inclusion. The paradox in the current trends on transaction taxes on mobile money services, especially in developing countries remain a dearth in the nascent global FINTECH ecosystem.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of financial derivatives usage and country’s tax environment characteristics on the relationship between financial derivatives and tax avoidance.

This study uses a cross-country analysis with the scope of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries which consists of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.

The level of financial derivatives usage positively affects the level of tax avoidance. This finding indicates that financial derivatives can be used as tax avoidance tool. Furthermore, the positive effect of the level of financial derivatives usage on the level of tax avoidance is lower in countries with a competitive tax environment than in countries with an uncompetitive tax environment. This finding indicates that in country with a competitive tax environment, the use of financial derivatives as a tax avoidance tool can be replaced by the tax facilities provided by that country.

This study uses four countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations region and does not test the sample based on the financial derivative types.

Tax authorities need to establish a clear tax regulation in regard to the tax treatment of financial derivatives transactions, e.g. define the definition of financial derivatives for hedging purposes and financial derivatives for speculative purposes; and define specific criteria to separate financial derivatives for hedging purposes from financial derivatives for speculative purposes. It is necessary to determine whether losses arising from derivative transactions are classified as deductible expenses or non-deductible expenses.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is also the first that provide empirical evidence that the relationship between financial derivatives and tax avoidance activities depends on a country’s tax environment.

The impact of paid tax return preparers on the horizontal equity (HE) of the federal tax system has significance for regulatory and tax policy reasons. Using multiple analytical techniques to consider data from the Statistics of Income Division's 2000 Individual Model File (IMF), this study shows that the HE measure is generally greater (implying less HE) for the paid-preparer returns than for the self-prepared returns, even after controlling for complexity and other variables that may differ systematically by tax preparation mode.

This study aims to examine the ICT skills needed by a fresh accounting graduate when first joining a tax firm; to find out usage of electronic tax (e‐tax) applications in tax practice; to assess the rating of senior tax practitioners on fresh graduates' ICT and e‐tax applications skills; and to solicit tax practitioners' opinion regarding integrating ICT skills and tax software into a tax course.

An online survey method was used to collect the data. An online survey was distributed to 385 tax practitioners who worked in the accounting/tax firms that participated in the university's internship programs. A total of 112 usable questionnaires were analyzed.

The survey found that the three most important ICT skills with which fresh graduates should be familiar before graduating were spreadsheet software, word‐processing software, and e‐mail. The result shows that the usage of e‐tax applications is still not pervasive in tax practice. Overall, senior tax practitioners rated fresh accounting graduates' ICT skills as “average”. Both senior (75 percent) and junior (73.7 percent) tax practitioners agreed that ICT skills and tax software should be integrated in the tax course offered by the universities.

This study has provided insights to policy makers and tax educators to revamp the existing tax curriculum, and to introduce learning tax software in classes, and to place more emphasis in imparting ICT skills in tax education.

Scholarly study on tax education and ICT is scant. Little is known about whether the existing tax education is adequate in meeting the needs of the employers in the job market. This paper has emerged to fill a knowledge gap.