IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rsarxx/v31y2017i2p134-150.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Determinants of external tax compliance costs: Evidence from South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Sharon Smulders
  • Madeleine Stiglingh
  • Riel Franzsen
  • Lizelle Fletcher

Abstract

Small businesses tend to rely on external service providers (tax practitioners, accountants, lawyers and bookkeepers) for assistance with their tax affairs. Payments to external service providers clearly affect a small business’s tax compliance costs. This study uses multiple regression analyses to investigate the key drivers of small business external tax compliance costs. This will assist Revenue Services in understanding what factors (determinants) could increase a small business’s external tax compliance costs and might assist in managing tax compliance behaviour and contribution.Overall, the results show that although the legal form, age, use of small business tax concessions, level of education of the respondents and the type of accounting system used are statistically significant determinants of external tax compliance costs, turnover is the greatest determinant. The results also indicate that external tax compliance costs are regressive in relation to the size of a business, confirming previous research findings in this arena.

Suggested Citation

  • Sharon Smulders & Madeleine Stiglingh & Riel Franzsen & Lizelle Fletcher, 2017. "Determinants of external tax compliance costs: Evidence from South Africa," South African Journal of Accounting Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(2), pages 134-150, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rsarxx:v:31:y:2017:i:2:p:134-150
    DOI: 10.1080/10291954.2016.1160175
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10291954.2016.1160175
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10291954.2016.1160175?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rsarxx:v:31:y:2017:i:2:p:134-150. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rsar .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.