The impact of tax professionals upon the compliance behavior of Australian individual taxpayers

Abstract

The tax compliance literature indicates that limited research attention has been given to gauging the influence of tax professionals upon individual taxpayer compliance behaviour. This potential gap in the literature needs to be addressed given that tax professionals not only act as intermediaries between the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and the majority of individual taxpayers but they can directly influence taxpayers’ ethical behaviour and the level of compliance.This empirical study explored whether or not a relationship exists between the advices provided by tax professionals and the compliance behaviour of Australian individual taxpayers (both evaders and non-evaders) taken from the taxpayers’ perspective. The findings revealed that there was a statistically significant relationship between the need for engaging tax professionals and compliance behaviour generally. There was also evidence of a statistically significant relationship between tax professionals’ aggressive advice and the compliance behaviour of non-evaders. It is envisaged that this study’s results will provide useful information for the Australian Taxation Office and have implications for tax policy development.