Tax knowledge and tax compliance determinants in self assessment

implemented), the taxpayers’ knowledge and awareness of tax laws will have
significantly increased compared to Loo’s research findings and could be reasonably
considered to have reached a stable plateau of development of SAS specific knowledge
making this a suitable point to extend Loo’s work. Further, the questionnaire that was
developed by Loo (2006) in examining the compliance behaviour among the subjects was
directly referring to specific tax knowledge questions; she did not use hypothetical
situation questions in order to examine the propensity of the subject to comply with tax
laws. For example, (p. 132) compliance among the subjects was measured by Yes/No
questions whereby (for taxable income) ‘yes’ indicated that the subject had ‘complied’,
‘no’ indicated ‘non-compliance’ and ‘not sure’ indicated ‘unintentional non-compliance’.
For questions on reporting exempted income, the measurement of compliance would be
‘yes’ to indicate ‘over complied’, ‘no’ to indicate ‘complied’ and ‘not sure’ to indicate
‘unintentional non-compliance’. This study will use separate questions in order to
examine the level of tax knowledge and the tax compliance behaviour (hypothetical
scenarios) to attempt to provide a richer exploration of compliance behaviour.
One of the major contributions of this study is to assist the IRB in developing their tax
education system and tax audit judgments in SAS. The findings of this study will give
indicators to the tax administrator in terms of the level of tax knowledge and the
characteristics of taxpayers’ compliance behaviour in assisting the IRB to accomplish the
three fold objectives of SAS, including impacts on voluntary compliance among the
taxpayers, especially for individuals.
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