Estimating Vat Refunds the Case of South Africa

This study intends to estimate VAT refund levels in South Africa in an ideal situation where there are well-equipped, incorruptible officials and a proper VAT system is in place. Understanding the dynamics behind the behaviour of VAT and its main drivers is crucial and could have a huge benefit to the country’s economy with regards to closing the tax gap related to this tax type. Using the data from various sources (VAT refunds and some macroeconomic variables), a Vector Autoregression (VAR) model was used to estimate the level of VAT refunds in South Africa. The model estimates VAT refunds for the period 2021/22 to be R242.7 billion, while the VAT refunds forecast for the period 2022/23 and 2023/24 amounts to R254.6 billion and R267.3 billion, respectively. Furthermore, VAT refunds contribute on average 17.5% to the total tax for the forecast period of 2021/22-2023/24. The study also indicates that the growth in VAT refunds is influenced by the growth in domestic VAT collections, increasing employment rate and the growth in both agriculture and construction GDP. The estimated level of VAT refunds can serve as an important consideration in the national budgeting processes in South Africa. Adequate provisions can be made to enable proper planning and distributions to government departments. To our knowledge, this study is the first of its kind for South Africa. In summary, the South African tax authority should not deviate from the primary goal of building sound VAT systems based on improved voluntary compliance through effective systems of self-assessment

Compliance Behaviour of New Zealand Exporters with Best Practices of Supply Chain Security

<p>Uninterrupted growth of international trade and the constant threats to global supply chains have led to the emergence of numerous voluntary compliance guidelines based on standards and compliance. Initiatives, such as, the Authorised Economic Operators is the result of the global efforts to facilitate, prevent and secure international trade against cross-border crime. The Authorised Economic Operator is an initiative of the World Customs Organisation and its member countries. Its core philosophy is developing public to private partnerships for the safety of international trade and trade facilitation. These initiatives are growing in scope with a variety of programmes developed by governments. The objective of these programmes is encouraging an ethos of voluntary compliance based on standards, best practices and self-governance. Certified firms can obtain a trusted trader status and cross-border benefits when they demonstrate that their supply chain is secure. New Zealand has its own programme called the Secure Export Scheme. While this programme is voluntary in nature, firms entering the programme are required to adopt, maintain, and comply with the standards of security for their supply chain. This thesis investigates the compliance behaviour of New Zealand exporters with the standards of security of the Secure Export Scheme. The Authorised Economic Programme is a new concept, and while there is scholarly research of other types of voluntary standards, research in this particular area is minimal. To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, this is one of the first studies to examine the compliance behaviour of firms that have been part of the programme since inception. Accordingly, this study is guided by the various views of the compliance theory and proffers a conceptual framework to delineate the different actors and factors that influence firms’ compliance behaviour. The study measured compliance and non-compliance of firms to understand the underlying patterns with specific best practices. This study contributes towards our current understanding of compliance behaviour. While, overall, the compliance of the New Zealand exporters with the best practices is high, there are some areas of concern. The study further identified that a number of firms were not compliant with certain best practices. This finding indicates that other factors, such as, the way the governing body presents its written requirements might influence the compliance behaviour with those specific best practices. The conceptual model proposed in this study lays the foundation for further research seeking to probe compliance behaviour of Authorised Economic Operators.</p>

Compliance Behaviour of New Zealand Exporters with Best Practices of Supply Chain Security

<p>Uninterrupted growth of international trade and the constant threats to global supply chains have led to the emergence of numerous voluntary compliance guidelines based on standards and compliance. Initiatives, such as, the Authorised Economic Operators is the result of the global efforts to facilitate, prevent and secure international trade against cross-border crime. The Authorised Economic Operator is an initiative of the World Customs Organisation and its member countries. Its core philosophy is developing public to private partnerships for the safety of international trade and trade facilitation. These initiatives are growing in scope with a variety of programmes developed by governments. The objective of these programmes is encouraging an ethos of voluntary compliance based on standards, best practices and self-governance. Certified firms can obtain a trusted trader status and cross-border benefits when they demonstrate that their supply chain is secure. New Zealand has its own programme called the Secure Export Scheme. While this programme is voluntary in nature, firms entering the programme are required to adopt, maintain, and comply with the standards of security for their supply chain. This thesis investigates the compliance behaviour of New Zealand exporters with the standards of security of the Secure Export Scheme. The Authorised Economic Programme is a new concept, and while there is scholarly research of other types of voluntary standards, research in this particular area is minimal. To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, this is one of the first studies to examine the compliance behaviour of firms that have been part of the programme since inception. Accordingly, this study is guided by the various views of the compliance theory and proffers a conceptual framework to delineate the different actors and factors that influence firms’ compliance behaviour. The study measured compliance and non-compliance of firms to understand the underlying patterns with specific best practices. This study contributes towards our current understanding of compliance behaviour. While, overall, the compliance of the New Zealand exporters with the best practices is high, there are some areas of concern. The study further identified that a number of firms were not compliant with certain best practices. This finding indicates that other factors, such as, the way the governing body presents its written requirements might influence the compliance behaviour with those specific best practices. The conceptual model proposed in this study lays the foundation for further research seeking to probe compliance behaviour of Authorised Economic Operators.</p>

A Study on Critical Factors of Tax Compliance Behaviour among Small and Medium Enterprises in Libya

Tax compliance can be described as the level to which taxpayers obey or fail to obey the rules of taxation of their country. This is an admitted fact that the aim of an effective administration of tax is to enhance the voluntary compliance of tax with the use of all possible approaches that may include penalties as well. The primary purpose of this study is to assess the tax compliance behaviour among small and medium enterprises in Libya. This study provides a cornerstone for those who are looking for the reasons for tax compliance to be low. Therefore, this study examines the determinants of tax compliance and tax compliance behaviour. To achieve the goals of this study, a questionnaire survey was administered. Multiple regressions were used to test the formulated hypotheses. The results of this study show how the behaviour of tax compliance can be influenced by poor awareness, unfair taxes, low morale, strict authorities, tax rate and tax penalties. In relation to the practical and theoretical contributions, so far, to the best of the researcher’s knowledge, no scientific research has been done on this. This research would assist politicians, tax officials and the government of Libya in researching this phenomenon. Keywords: Tax compliance, Tax compliance behaviour, Determinants of tax, Tax knowledge, Tax penalty

The Effects of Tax Knowledge, Tax Complexity and Tax Morale Towards Tax Compliance Behaviour Among Salaried Group in Malaysia

This study examines the relationship between tax knowledge, complexity and morale with the tax compliance behaviour among salaried group in Malaysia. A structured questionnaire were distributed to the private and government sector employees throughout Malaysia. The data analysis from 152 completed responses revealed that tax knowledge, complexity and morale proved to have significant influences on the tax compliance behaviour among salaried group. The findings of this study not only contribute to literature in exploring determinants that encourage voluntary compliance among the taxpayers under the Self-Assessment System (SAS) in Malaysia, they also provide insights to the governing bodies and the tax authorities of the needs to improve the current tax policy and merangka strategic movement in improving tax literacy among the taxpayers. This present study, however, has limitations due to the use of closed questionnaires that might not capture further information completely on the understanding of tax regulations and the factors causing non-compliance.

Taxpayer's Compliance: Towards Voluntary Compliance

The understanding of taxpayers' regulatory compliance still remains a big question. There have been some studies discussing about the taxpayers' regulatory compliance. Its variety of variables covers: 1) tax cognition, 2) tax understanding, 3) sunset policy, 4) tax amnesty, 5) tax sanction, 6) taxpayer awareness, 7) tax authorities service, 8) taxpayer's willingness, 9) perception on service effectiveness, 10) tax automation, 11) taxpayer's environment, 12) tax tariff, and 13) many more. A number of studies on the taxpayers' regulatory compliance mentioned indicate that this topic is still a special concern, and the main focus tends to center on the factors affecting on the taxpayers' regulatory compliance. This study does not refocus on influencing factors on the taxpayers' regulatory compliance. This study aims to criticize the understanding of the prospective and the taxpayers' about the taxpayers' regulatory compliance. It is sometimes measured from administrative regulation, punctuality, or willingness for payment. Unfortunately, self-understanding about the taxpayers' regulatory compliance has not been seriously taken for implementation. This topic is very interesting since there have been many topics talking about tax planning, self-corruption by taxpayers (an effort to reduce the reported amount of income tax), or some efforts to analyze influencing factors on the taxpayers' regulatory compliance, but does not study the definitions of it. Keywords: Taxpayer's Compliance; Voluntary Compliance; Awareness; Qualitative Research

Collecting, Sharing and Utilising Data to Inform Decision-making and Improve Equality

Although we live in an era in which government and private organisations collect large amounts of data, this has not filtered through to anti-discrimination and equality law in Australia. Government and its agencies have little incentive to collect information, nor does business. Neither group bears any obligation to tackle discrimination if they detect it. Yet the self-regulating enforcement model used in equality law is premised on the idea that information will be available to aid voluntary compliance. This article examines the nature of the data organisations that are currently required to collect and identify significant information gaps. It argues that it is not enough to simply fill those gaps with information; increased data collection needs to be accompanied by the obligation to address inequality if that is what the data reveals.

Long-Term Climate Treaties with a Refunding Club

We show that an appropriately-designed “Refunding Club” can simultaneously solve both free-riding problems in mitigating climate change—participating in a coalition with an emission reduction target and enduring voluntary compliance with the target once the coalition has been formed. Countries in the Club pay an initial fee into a fund that is invested in assets. In each period, part of the fund is distributed among the Club members in relation to the emission reductions they have achieved, suitably rescaled by a weighting factor. We show that an appropriate refunding scheme can implement any feasible abatement path a Club wants to implement. The contributions to the initial fund can be used to disentangle efficiency and distributional concerns and/or to make a coalition stable. Making the grand coalition stable in the so-called “modesty approach” requires less than 0.5% of World GDP. Finally, we suggest ways to foster initial participation, to incorporate equity concerns with regard to developing countries, and ways to ease the burden to fill the initial fund.

Tackling self-employment in the informal sector in Europe: evaluating trust-building strategies

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to evaluate contrasting ways of tackling self-employment in the informal sector. Conventionally, the participation of the self-employed in the informal sector has been viewed as a rational economic decision taken when the expected benefits outweigh the costs, and thus enforcement authorities have sought to change the benefit-to-cost ratio by increasing the punishments and chances of being caught. Recently, however, neo-institutional theory has viewed such endeavor as a product of a lack of vertical trust (in government) and horizontal trust (in others) and pursued trust-building strategies to nurture voluntary compliance.Design/methodology/approachTo evaluate these contrasting policy approaches, data are reported from special Eurobarometer survey 92.1 conducted in 2019 across 28 European countries (the 27 member states of the European Union and the United Kingdom) involving over 27,565 interviews.FindingsUsing probit regression analysis, the finding is that the likelihood of participation in informal self-employment is not associated with the level of expected punishments and chances of being caught, but is significantly associated with the level of vertical and horizontal trust, with a greater likelihood of participation in informal self-employment when there is lower vertical and horizontal trust.Practical implicationsThe outcome is a call for state authorities to shift away from the use of repressive policy measures that increase the penalties and chances of being caught and toward trust-building strategies to nurture voluntary compliance. How this can be achieved is explored.Originality/valueEvidence is provided to justify a shift toward seeking trust-building strategies by state authorities to engender voluntary compliance among the self-employed operating in the informal sector in Europe.