ABSTRACTS
Tax is an important stream of revenue for government’s development projects. The importance of tax systems as a major revenue source in a country is undeniable, these statistics have evidenced that tax revenues are one of main income source for many governments throughout the world but to maximize tax collection and minimize tax evasion among taxpayers is difficult to achieve in practice. However, tax compliance among SMEs is poor. In the framework of this study, an attempt to identify and evaluate the determinants of tax compliance of SMEs in Plateau State, as well as the perceived fairness of tax rates and tax legislations by government on the part of SMES and it’s effect on tax compliance level. The study also aims to ascertain the extent to which individual taxpayers’ burden influences their attitudes to tax compliance in Plateau State.
This research was a survey whose data is collected from two hundred taxpayers in Small Medium Enterprises. After the data was collected, it was analyzed using descriptive statistics then summarized and presented using statistical tools such as the Chi-Square, SPSS.
From the findings, the conclusion is that taxpayer’ attitudes do affect their compliance behaviour and recommendations were made for SMEs. The results also suggested that tax knowledge has a significant impact on tax compliance even though the level of tax knowledge varies significantly among respondents. The results also indicate that tax compliance is influenced specifically by probability of being audited, perceptions of government spending, penalties, personal financial constraints. Results of this study answer such questions as which various taxpayer characteristics of tax knowledge affect compliant behaviour. The results of this study also inform policymakers on the extent to which tax knowledge is important in a self assessment system and in what ways it can affect compliance.Keywords: taxpayers’ attitude, tax compliance, SMEs, developing economy, tax knowledge, tax rate.
