An investigation of the factors effective on the compliance behavior of the tax payers in the VAT system: A case study of Qazvin tax affairs general department

Abstract

In all current nations, individuals reject new taxes and any increase in the dimensions of existent taxes and resist against them. Meanwhile, attention could be devoted to the examination of tax payers’ behavior as a very important ramification of the research on the issues of tax and tax collection. The present article aims at investigating the compliance behavior of the tax payers in the VAT (value added tax) system. For so doing, three factors of structural and content dimensions, including compliance costs, tax culture, complexity provision, were chosen and their effect on the extent of tax payers’ compliance were tested in terms of research hypotheses. To collect data, 250 questionnaires were distributed among tax payers of this system. Then, the gathered data was analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) and research hypotheses were tested by regression and correlation tests. Findings indicate that there is a statistically significant relationship between compliance costs and tax culture and tax payers’ compliance, but there is not any significant relationship between complexity provision and tax compliance. Key words: Value added tax (VAT), tax compliance, compliance cost, tax culture, complexity provision