Taxpayers’ Education: A Key Strategy in Achieving Voluntary Compliance in Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study examined taxpayers’ education as a key strategy in achieving voluntary compliance in Lagos State. The objective of the study is to examine the impact of tax education programme on tax payment compliance behaviour. The study novel based on the extended research instruments adopted compared to earlier studies. This paper adopted a survey research method which is quasi-experimental form of design in nature. A simple random sampling technique was used to sample 250 Taxpayers in Lagos State. The Taxpayer Compliance Appraisal (TCA) questionnaire developed by the researcher following the lead of Fisher, Wartick and Mark (1992) was used as the adopted research instruments for data collection in the study. The descriptive analysis revealed that 44.6% (108) and 55.4% (134) of total surveyed taxpayers in Lagos state were male and female respectively. Also, the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) for the test of hypotheses revealed that tax education programme focused on enlightening taxpayers’ on socio-economic implications of tax evasion opportunities and the transparent and accountable use of tax proceeds have significant influence on taxpayers’ voluntary compliance in Lagos State, Nigeria. On this basis, the study proffered that there is need for tax education to be offered to students pursuing non-accounting courses and not restricted to accounting students at all levels. Also, government and other stakeholders should work together to reduce tax complexity and compliance cost in order to encourage voluntary compliance.

Keywords: Taxpayers’ education; Tax compliance, Tax evasion, ANOVA, Lagos State and Nigeria.