Search results

This chapter presents a seven-part case developed for use in a graduate-level tax planning class. The case is organized in a taxpayer/business “life-cycle” approach. Over the semester the case follows a married couple as they consider a number of investments, start a business, and expand the business. As the case progresses, the couple faces increasingly complex tax and business issues. The couple eventually winds down their involvement in the business and begins to plan for their retirement years. This chapter also provides a review of behavioral tax research published in the top accounting journals over the period 2004–2013. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the case could be adapted by behavioral tax researchers in their research programs and perhaps by accounting firms in their training programs.

Electronic filing (e‐filing) of personal tax returns has become a global trend in developed countries. An increasing number of individual UK taxpayers are seeking help from tax advisers as ambitious e‐filing targets increase the interaction between taxpayers, tax agents and government departments. This article aims to review the attitudes to information and communications technology (ICT) adoption between these three groups.

This article has partly built on the work of Walsh and White, who use Moore's “Technology Adoption Life Cycle” to examine e‐filing adoption by taxpayers and tax preparers in the USA. However, this article uses a mixed methodology that the authors argue is more suitable for the wider issues found in the UK.

The results confirm that small/medium sized tax agent firms are more likely to be technology enthusiasts/early adopters of e‐filing for their individual clients. As their business policies are more likely to be directly driven by technology enthusiasts, they have fewer issues with the incomplete e‐filing system available at the early stages of its roll out and were more motivated by the visible benefits available from adopting e‐filing. Larger firms have been slower and appeared more reluctant to embrace e‐filing of personal tax returns being concerned that engaging in HM Revenue and Customs controlled systems and targets would compromise their internal systems, ICT integrity and control of complex tax cases.

This split in e‐filing attitudes by tax agents supports Moore's “chasm” argument for technology adoption processes, implying solutions for widening participation found appropriate for other domains could be equally applicable in this domain. The article reflects on these findings and proposes practical solutions that build on prior research to assist the government in achieving the future ambitious targets for e‐filing.

This paper reports the results of a national survey of tax advisers, supported by follow‐up interviews, addressing the development of e‐filing for personal taxation in the UK.

I examined the association between economic, savings, and psychological factors on participation in traditional Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) (1983–1985). The data were panels of tax returns representing households qualifying for the maximum IRA contribution and whose only sources of income were employment and investments. Along with traditional economic variables, my regressions included psychological factors such as framing effects based on adaptive expectations. Although both economic and psychological constructs were important in explaining savings behavior, the latter were shown as more salient. Households having less favorable than expected withholding positions increased IRA participation, a finding corroborating prior research. Savings propensity (SAVE) and past participation were the most important factors linked to IRAs. Unexpected investment income was significantly related to IRA participation, providing evidence that deductible IRA contributions represent new savings rather than reshuffled old savings. The policy implications of this study suggest that savings plans redesigned to encourage greater retirement savings should include tax benefits that are in temporal proximity to the desired savings behavior.

The fundamental problem of designing a wide scope general revenue tax can be reduced to the selection of the base used for administering the tax. Our current personal income tax is a hybrid version of a tax assessed on the basis of a tax unit's annual income receipts. An alternative to an income‐based tax that has received much theoretical treatment but little actual application is an expenditure‐based tax. An expenditure tax (also called a consumption tax or cash flow tax in the context of this paper) differs from an income tax in that it exempts net saving and investment from the tax base. Though the details of a consumption tax design are discussed more fully elsewhere in this paper, the tax base of an expenditure tax is roughly determined by subtracting net savings from gross receipts (including wages, tips, salaries, income from investments, interests, etc.). Withdrawals from savings constitute dissavings and are appropriately included in net savings. The cash flow tax, with wealth transfers deductible to the donor and included in the tax base of the recipient, would be a tax on an individual's standard of living. Similar to the present income tax standard deduction, some universal credit or exemption for a small level of consumption could be allowed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that influence the willingness of the public to adopt online tax filing services.

An online survey was conducted from which 400 valid questionnaires were recovered. The questionnaire data were used to research the degree of acceptance among Taiwanese taxpayers with regard to the online tax filing system. Respondents were classified into existing users (who were sub‐categorised into early adopters and late adopters) and potential adopters.

The results demonstrate that the perceived attributes of trialability and observability significantly influence the adoption intention of late adopters. However, these attributes did not have a significant influence on early adopters. Social norms and the perceived attributes of relative advantage, compatibility, and complexity significantly influence the adoption intention of current users. For potential adopters, only social norms had a significant effect on their intention to use the online tax filing system.

This study recommends that a more convenient and user‐friendly design for online tax‐filing processes would enhance the perception of the system and encourage taxpayers to continue or consider using this e‐government service.

While online tax‐filing systems are getting more attention in e‐government development, little is known about why people are willing to use them. This paper investigates the reasons by applying innovation diffusion theory, social cognitive theory and contingency theory. The results could be applicable to other e‐government services.

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.

Misconduct by lawyers in law firms is often attributed to pressures from increasing competition for legal services. Modern firms do face fierce competitive pressures. We can gain more subtle insights, however, by focusing on the specific markets in which particular firms operate and how forms of influence in law firms interact with common patterns of behavior in organizations. This chapter draws on this approach to analyze the experience of Jenkens & Gilchrist, a national law firm that had to close its doors in 2007 because of tax shelter work that triggered civil lawsuits and government investigations.

This paper examines the role of government procurement as a social policy mechanism within a multilateral open trading system. Government regulations globally are being transformed to foster more responsible business conduct in multinational enterprises (MNEs). Yet, concern that sustainability may present a discriminatory barrier to trade has stalled the progress of sustainable public procurement (SPP) at the international level, raising questions regarding the role and scope of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) to align taxpayer-funded contracts with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals.

With a focus on social sustainability, this paper reviews the grey and academic literature to assess the changing landscape of public procurement policy and supply chain legislation in high-income countries.

Frontrunner nations are adopting a mandatory approach to sustainable public procurement and due diligence legislation is elevating supply chain risk from reputational damage to legal liability. While technological innovation and the clean, green production of manufactured goods dominates the sustainable public procurement literature, the social aspects of sustainability poverty, inequality and human rights remain underrepresented.

The scope of this paper is limited to the examination of government procurement covered by the WTO-GPA (2012). Smaller value contracts, under the WTO-GPA thresholds and the category of defence are beyond the scope of the paper.

The paper focusses on the underserved topic of social sustainability in business-to-government (B2G) – business to government – supply chains arguing that for responsible business conduct to become a competitive advantage, it must be more meaningfully rewarded on the demand-side of all taxpayer-funded contracts in organisation for economic co-operation and development countries. The paper introduces the idea of priceless procurement as a mechanism to build system capacity in the evaluation of non-financial sustainability objectives.

To build the capacity to stimulate competition based on social and environmental policy objectives, the paper introduces the concept of priceless procurement in B2G contracts.

Given the enormous scope of the decontamination and decommissioning (D&D) work that government and industry face, there is a tremendous opportunity to save money and avoid further insults to the environment and to human health by applying the principles of life cycle analysis (LCA). An LCA approach is presented that is especially valuable in D&D decision making because it provides a systematic, comprehensive, defensible decision‐aiding process to find solutions that reduce costs and risks of D&D projects. Our approach to LCA differs from other approaches by taking into consideration all the factors important to owners and stakeholders – life cycle cost, health and safety, the environment, programmatic impacts, and other factors. Stakeholder participation is also a key part of the process. The result is robust, durable solutions for even the most complex D&D project. A specific demonstration of this approach to aid D&D at two US Department of Energy sites is presented.