Stakeholders’ Engagement as A Strategy Toward Optimizing Voluntary Tax Compliance: A Case Study of The Nigerian Tax Administration

Governments across the globe depend on sustainable revenue sources to fund their country’s development. This goal requires citizens to declare their income honestly and pay taxes to support the government’s socio-economic programs; as such,the government has a responsibility to demonstrate accountability and transparency in the utilization of tax monies and in fulfilling its social obligations to its citizens. The continuous failure of the government to provide citizens with basic social services tends to exacerbate the trend of tax non-compliance, as citizens would generally overlook the constitutional tax provisions, which require them to pay taxes based on the annual statutory income declaration.This is the general practice in Nigeria, where the level of tax compliance with the self-assessment regime is below 40% (Onyegbule, 2011).Citizen stend to become non-compliant with tax obligations when they cannot see the link between taxes and services that are meant to be enjoyed by them. With the current ineffective compliance and enforcement policies and strategies implemented in past years, the trend of tax non-compliance continues to get worse; hence, this paper advocates the adoption of stakeholders’ engagement strategy to promote voluntary tax compliance.