Government cannot run in isolation, they need revenue to run their operations and one of the sources of this revenue is taxation. Despite government lamentations of a lack of funds for infrastructure development, there is a scarcity of literature in Nigeria on how tax performances may influence the quality of governance. This study examined the impact of tax performance on the quality of governance in Nigeria. Data for the study were taken from the OECD, the World Bank, and the Central Bank of Nigeria's annual reports, and the research design used is ex-post facto. The Hausman test was employed to analyze the data collected after subjecting it to the unit root test. Tax performance is proxy by company income tax, personal income tax, and value-added tax while the corruption perception index was used as a proxy for quality of governance. This study's findings revealed that the quality of governance and personal income tax are positively and significantly related, with a p-value of 0.0000, a t-statistic of 6.320390, and coefficients of 0.200227. This study's findings revealed that quality of governance and company income tax are negatively and significantly related, with a p-value of 0.0000, t-statistic of -9.743164, and coefficients of -0.228796. However, this study's findings revealed that the quality of governance and value-added tax are not related, with a p-value of 0.3252, a t-statistic of -0.984622, and a coefficient of -0.033803. This study concluded that tax performance had a significant impact on governance quality in Nigeria. This study recommends that taxation if appropriately controlled will improve the quality of governance, create jobs in the country, lower inflation, and boost economic growth.
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