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The present work aimed to present the perception of Tunisian professionals towards companies engaged in social responsibility practices and describe the tax evasion strategies of socially responsible Tunisian companies following the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic (COVID-19) shock.

A survey was sent to 119 Tunisian tax administration auditors. Data analysis methods principal component analysis (PCA) and regression analysis were used. The data were collected through a questionnaire after the general containment of Tunisia from September 2020 to February 2021. These quantitative data were analysed using processing software (STATA).

Professionals of the tax authorities, particularly those in charge of the audit mission, aim for corporate profitability from the perspective of stakeholders that seek to integrate ethics and social responsibility into companies and consider employee morale a top priority. The results show that highly ethical and socially responsible professionals are far from practising aggressive strategies. Thus, an auditor from the tax administration is far from engaging in social responsibility to justify fraudulent acts. During the COVID-19 period, the role of these professionals was to prevent and detect fraud in the tax sector to fight corruption and investigate taxes based on sound regulations.

The results are consistent with optimal taxation theory, which postulates that a tax system should be chosen to maximise a social welfare function subject to a set of constraints. Professionals seek to make taxation much simpler for taxpayers by providing advice and consultation to manage tax obligations. The minimisation of tax or the play of tax values requires expertise in the field to respect legal constraints. Therefore, these professionals play a crucial role in tax collection, as the professionals' advice and suggestions can influence taxpayers' decision-making.

In recent years, academic researchers, policy makers and the public have become increasingly interested in corporate tax evasion behaviour. At the same time, companies are under increasing pressure to integrate CSR into the companies' decision-making processes, which has led to increased academic interest in CSR. Opportunistic tax minimisation reduces state resources and funds needed for government programmes to improve the social welfare of the entire community. This study represents an overriding concern not only for legal and tax authorities and companies, but also for shareholders and stakeholders.

The authors' study contributes to the existing literature by determining the state of play on corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices amongst Tunisian tax authorities' professionals. In Tunisia, an executive of the tax authorities in charge of the verification mission is required to verify the proper application of the accounting and tax legislation in force, follow up on tax control operations on declared taxes and validate the sincerity of the accounts. This study focussed on the tax evasion of companies engaged in social responsibility practices according to the judgements of Tunisian tax authorities' auditors during the global COVID-19 pandemic.

This study aims to investigate the extent to which the theory of reasoned action (TRA) can be used to explain tax compliance among small business enterprises (SBEs) in Uganda and extends the application and relevance of the theory to a new area of tax compliance. It contributes the TRA, as a predictor of tax compliance in a developing country context.

A cross-sectional survey targeting different categories of SBEs was carried out using interviewer-administered questionnaires. A sample of 384 SBEs was used in the study.

The TRA contributes critical insights on the tax compliance behaviour of small businesses in developing economies. It influences tax compliance behaviour. The study illustrates evidence about the negative attitudes SBEs have on intentions to comply with tax regulations and the extent to which these attitudes influence their compliance behaviour. Subjective norms positively influence tax compliance intentions in a positive manner. Overall, the appearance of these intentions shows a negative effect on tax compliance behaviour. These findings also imply that Uganda Revenue Authority needs to understand the social psychology of taxpayers and tailor these in their policies and efforts to increase compliance.

The TRA has been used to explain behaviour in numerous situations in psychology. The study used this theory in a new geographical, economic and administrative environment; Uganda. This theory has proved relevant in explaining psychological, sociological and economic behaviour; specifically tax compliance. The TRA was revised to include a new construct of perceived behavioural control, which turned into the theory of planned behaviour. This could not be studied due to time and logistic constraints. Therefore, there is a need to investigate if this revised theory can explain tax compliance behaviour better.

The paper suggests that tax administration efforts and policies should consider the social-psychology aspects of the taxpayers to improve tax compliance.

This study adds a new arena of explaining tax compliance from a theory commonly used in psychology to a new setting in finance.

The purpose of this paper is to document relationships between accountants’ socioeconomic beliefs and attitudes and their professional commitment and ethical decisions in a domain-specific context. Specifically, it investigates the relationships among Chinese tax accountants’ level of belief in the importance of corporate ethics and social responsibility, affective/normative professional commitment and ethical judgements/intentions in a case involving client pressure to commit tax fraud.

The study employs a survey of tax practitioners employed by public accounting firms in China. The data are analyzed using linear regression and structural equation modelling.

The stakeholder view, representing both normative and practical support for the importance of corporate ethics and social responsibility, was strongly and positively associated with professional commitment among tax practitioners. The stakeholder view also exhibited a strong negative association with intentions to engage in tax fraud. Tax accountants who possessed higher levels of professional commitment judged tax fraud as more unethical, and such ethical judgements were associated with a lower likelihood of intending to engage in fraud.

The associations between: first, professional accountants’ beliefs in the importance of corporate ethics and social responsibility and their level of professional commitment; and second, professional commitment and tax professionals’ ethical judgements have received little attention in the prior literature. The findings of this study suggest that the integrity of public accounting services may be influenced by relatively broad socioeconomic attitudes, and that this effect may operate partially through commitment to professional values.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the influence of justice, culture and love of money on ethical perceptions about tax evasion. As well as gender will strengthen the influence of justice, culture and love of money on ethical perceptions about tax evasion.

The primary data were collected and analyzed using a popular component-based model called partial least square (PLS). PLS consists of two sub-models, measurement model or outer model and structural model or inner model. The measurement model shows how real or observable variables are latent variables to be measured. While the structural model shows the level of estimation between latent or construct variables.

The statistical analysis showed that neither the coefficient of gender (moderating variable) nor the interaction between gender and the exogenous variable are significant. Solimun (2010) explained that such moderating variable is called homologizer moderation (potential moderation). Homologizer moderation refers to variable that may potentially become a moderating variable influencing relationship between predictor (exogenous) and dependant variable (endogenous). This variable has no interaction with predictors or can be said to be insignificant on the dependent variable. In this study, gender is a potential moderating variable (homologizer moderation). Gender can potentially become a moderating variable influencing relationship between justice, culture and love of money and ethical perception on tax evasion. Gender does not have interaction with justice, culture and love of money or significant influence toward ethical perception on tax evasion.

There are very few studies on tax evasion from an ethical point of view so this study is not only important but also interesting because it shows that tax evasion is a classic problem taking place in nearly all countries that apply taxation system; cultural difference results in different views on ethical perceptions on tax evasion (Basri, 2015); this study uses the local wisdom of Balinese people, namely, Tri Hita Karana and thus, this study becomes relatively new; justice is one of the non-economic variables of tax compliance behavior (Darmawan, 2012), so that the researcher is interested in conducting further research on the effect of justice toward ethical perception on tax evasion; there are very few studies discussing love of money (Hnisz et al., 2013); therefore, research on the effect of love of money toward ethical perception on tax evasion is of necessity and the findings of previous studies that are inconsistent. The researcher predicted that there are contingency factors that influence the relationship between justice, culture and love of money toward ethical perceptions on tax evasion. As suggested by Baridwan (2012), gender, the moderating variable in this study, refers to masculine and feminine character as a dimension of social culture; this study is carried out in the Tax Service Office (KPP Pratama) of Badung Utara because during the 2015 tax year, KPP Pratama Badung Utara was one of the KPPs in Bali DGT Regional Office which experienced a decline in realization of revenues and a sharp decline in growth.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of attitudes toward the perceived importance of corporate ethics and social responsibility, and Machiavellianism, a general measure of the propensity for manipulative and deceitful behaviour, on tax professionals' willingness to participate in aggressive tax avoidance schemes of corporate clients.

The paper is based on a survey of tax professionals in Hong Kong.

The paper finds that Machiavellianism affects tax advisors' expressed viewpoints toward the importance of corporate ethics and social responsibility, which affect professional judgements toward aggressive tax minimisation. As anticipated, high Machiavellians are more likely to endorse the traditional “stockholder view” of corporate responsibility (which holds that corporations have little responsibility beyond maximising their profits), and less likely to support the “stakeholder view” (which recognises corporate responsibilities to a broader range of potential stakeholders). The stockholder view (but not the stakeholder view) of corporate responsibility mediates the relationship between Machiavellianism and ethical/social responsibility judgements. Machiavellianism also had significant direct effects on ethical and social responsibility judgements.

The paper provides insights into the decision processes used to justify aggressive tax minimisation strategies. The findings indicate that commonly articulated views toward corporate ethics and social responsibility may be used to support unethical strategies. In particular, the finding that the stockholder view mediates the relationship between Machiavellianism and ethical/social responsibility judgements suggests that the stockholder view may be adopted to rationalise overly aggressive tax avoidance.

This article aims to review qualitative research on tax practitioners. US tax professionals have always found themselves in a uniquely ambiguous position. Unlike auditors, the espousal of service to the public interest is not constantly articulated. Unlike management consultants, the devotion that practitioners can have to their clients’ interest cannot be unconstrained. Tax practitioners are expected to help clients minimize their tax liabilities, while simultaneously assisting the government collect fair shares of tax revenue. Using semi-structured interviews, the paper examines the nuance of this navigation. Practitioners struggle to serve two masters, albeit imperfectly. The qualitative nature of relationships looms as a disproportionally important factor, often neglected in normative accounts and empirical evaluations

Semi-structured interviews with tax practitioners.

Practitioners struggle to serve two masters, albeit imperfectly. Where they strike the balance is difficult to predict, as people differ in how aggressive they are willing to be. Practitioners want to be ethical and rarely are willing to take positions that they perceive to be dangerous to their livelihood. The fear of audits is also shared. The qualitative nature of relationships looms as a disproportionately important factor, and one that is not well-appreciated in the literature.

More study of a qualitative nature is needed. Students need to be given a better idea of the conflicts that exist in practice on a daily basis. More work is needed that exposes the importance of the client interface and the limited value of tax research outside of the marketplace.

The long-term relationship with clients is very important to how tax practitioners approach the ambiguities of the tax law. How tax practitioners decide what is worth an investment of their time is under-studied

The extent to which we can ask individuals to protect the integrity of the tax collection process is debatable as long as they are compensated by self-interested taxpayers. The limits of ethical codes should be revisited in such a complex world.

Actually listens to working professions describe their world.

In an attempt to enhance the core professional values of tax practitioners in South Africa, the South African Revenue Service has proposed the regulation of tax practitioners’ services. It is arguable whether or not this would be the only factor to influence the ethical behaviour of tax practitioners. A literature review was conducted to identify factors that could influence the ethical behaviour of tax practitioners. Numerous possibilities emerged. It is therefore recommended that if regulation is to be successful, caution should be exercised in writing a code of best practice for tax practitioners.

The purpose of this study is to deploy and expand the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) model with application to renewable energy investment by incorporating the component of tax incentives (TIN). This will serve as an additional measure in understanding the conventional energy stakeholders’ investment intention into renewable energy in Nigeria.

Data was collected from 357 individual key conventional energy stakeholders in Nigeria using survey questionnaires. The research model was tested using structural equation modelling.

The results from the study revealed the applicability of the TPB in predicting the conventional energy stakeholders’ investment intention into renewable energy. The result indicates that attitude and subjective norm are significantly associated with investment intentions.

The outcome implies that the integration of tax incentives can improve the predictive power of the model as the introduced variable demonstrates a significant impact on the conventional energy stakeholders’ investment intention into renewable energy.

This study extends on the well-established TPB model by integrating tax incentives in understanding investment intentions and the outcome implies a significant association of tax incentives with investment intention and moderated the influence of attitude and subjective norm over the conventional energy stakeholders’ investment intention.

TPB has been widely deployed and even extended to predict intention in numerous fields of study. Available literature presents the lack of such empirical research that focuses on investment in Nigeria and specifically regarding energy investment. The outcome highlighted the significant influence of tax incentives, thus the need for policymakers to suggest and implement various tax incentives to attract private investment into renewable energy for electricity generation that will consequently assist in achieving SDG-7 and mitigate climate change.

This study aims to examine the factors influencing the intention to comply with business zakat in a developing country.

A sample of 700 small and medium scale businessmen was drawn using the random sampling method. A total of 524 responses was analyzed using the partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique.

Results indicate attitudes toward zakat evasion, attitudes toward moral reasoning, peer influence, zakat knowledge, zakat distribution and perceived zakat board capital positively and significantly influence intention to pay zakat. Interestingly, the enforcement of zakat law was found to significantly influence intention but in a negative direction.

Accordingly, it was recommended for policymakers to pay more attention to policy formulation to the identified factors in line with the results so that zakat collection could be increased.

The study contributes generally to zakat compliance knowledge and specifically to zakat on business wealth in Muslim majority states in developing countries that are fighting against poverty. The PLS-SEM method and its application in the Islamic field study, especially on zakat payment has a limited discussion in previous studies, which is a unique contribution of this study.