Accountability, Legitimacy, and Voluntary Tax Compliance: A Case Study in Tax Offices in Mazandaran Province of Iran

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of the tax system's accountability on improving taxpayers' voluntary tax compliance through influencing taxpayers' perceived legitimacy in tax offices in Mazandaran province of Iran. The accountability is here taken as 'responsiveness'. Adopting mixed methods design, the Delphi technique was first used to identify the legitimate expectations and demands of taxpayers. In the second step, 4 types of accountability mechanisms were identified as the components of overall accountability. In the third step, using partial least squares path modeling via Smart PLS software, the impact of the tax system's accountability on the perceived legitimacy of the tax system as well as the impact of perceived legitimacy of the tax system on voluntary tax compliance was tested. The obtained results indicated that the tax system's accountability affects voluntary tax compliance through influencing taxpayers' perceived legitimacy of the tax system. Furthermore, political and social accountability was not at the optimal level and the optimality of managerial and legal accountability did not have a significant impact on voluntary tax compliance. Finally, it is suggested that to improve the perceived legitimacy of the tax system. As the results of voluntary tax compliance showed, more attention should be paid to the mechanisms of political accountability in the political sector and social accountability in both the political and administrative sectors of the tax system.

Using Mixed Methods to Understand Tax Compliance Behaviour

“…Development of the quantitive method is often the reason for mixing methods (Enachescu et al, 2019;Isa, 2014;Lavermicocca and McKerchar, 2013;Muharremi, Salé & Hoxhaj, 2022;Rosid, Evans and Tran-Nam, 2016;Sobhkhiz et al, 2019). This perhaps also explains the disproportionate presentation of results, with the focus on presenting results from the quantitative method and a superficial presentation of the results from the qualitative method.…”

“…By incorporating the role of structural and content attributes the researcher was able to test the effect of this factor on the relationship between nudge messages and tax compliance behaviour thus increasing the validity of the quantitative results. A few tax compliance studies have acknowledged this value of improving data collection instruments by adopting a mixed methods approach (Enachescu et al, 2019;Isa, 2014;Lavermicocca and McKerchar, 2013;Muharremi, Salé and Hoxhaj, 2022;Rosid, Evans and Tran-Nam, 2016;Sobhkhiz et al, 2019).…”