Personal Taxpayer Compliance Costs: Recent Evidence from Australia

Abstract

This article reports on the tax compliance burden of Australian personal (non-business) taxpayers in the 2011-12 tax year. A survey of just over 4,000 individuals was conducted in late 2012 and average tax compliance costs were derived from the data and combined with macro-statistics to generate aggregate personal taxpayer compliance costs. The study demonstrates that personal taxpayer compliance costs have grown by about 73 per cent since 1995 and suggests that various technologically driven simplification initiatives undertaken by the government (such as e-tax and pre-filled income tax returns) have not been sufficient to slow down this growth in personal tax compliance costs.