Quality of Tax Services, Moderated by Trust in State Internal Revenue Service and Voluntary Tax Compliance Behaviour among Individual Taxpayers in South-West, Nigeria

Abstract

Research on tax compliance is of economic, social and political benefit to the government and the citizens. Constant loss of tax revenue due to level of Quality of Tax Service (QTS) rendered by tax authority is perceived to have adversely affected nation’s revenue generation and infrastructural development. Researches have been carried out on taxpayers’ compliance, but not many considered the effect of QTS in their study. This studied looked at the probable influence of QTS on taxpayers’ Voluntary Tax Compliance (VTC) behaviour in South-West, Nigeria. The study used survey research design with study population of 5,216,422 individual taxpayers. Data were collected with validated questionnaire by means of random sampling techniques. Sample size of 1,200 was used with a response rate of 87.6%. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse data at 5% significance level. The study revealed that QTS positively influenced VTC among individual taxpayers in the study states (Adj.R2 =.117, F(6, 1050) =24.139, p =.000). There was evidence that trust in State Internal Revenue Service, QTS and employment status have significant relationship with VTC behaviour while gender, age and educational level do not have significant relationship with VTC in the study states respectively. The study concluded that QTS influenced VTC. Therefore, lack of tax awareness, tax education/information and poor tax service delivery was responsible for tax non-compliance. The study recommended that government should carry out tax education/information and tax awareness to taxpayers while tax officials should apply the concept of public management to tax service delivery.