Relationship Between Firm Attributes and Tax Noncompliance in Nigeria: A Literature Review.

Abstract

Following the recent Covid 19 pandemic, a lot of countries especially developing countries like Nigeria have been struggling to increase their revenue base to stabilize their economies. Taxation is one of the alternatives used by the Nigerian government among other alternatives such as borrowing which has been criticized by stakeholders. However, tax noncompliance has been a threat to the revenue generation efforts which necessitates government to put in necessary measures to curb the tax noncompliance menace including constantly rolling out tax reforms such as the Nigeria Tax act 2025. Scholars have agreed that solutions to tax noncompliance should be a continuous process and also contextualized because different factors have been globally recognized as factors that lead to tax noncompliance including firm attributes. Therefore, this study intends to review existing literature on the relationship between firm attributes with a focus on firm’s size, financial leverage, capital intensity, corporate reputation and intangible intensity among others and tax noncompliance to identify research gaps and frontiers for further research with a view to finding lasting solutions to tax noncompliance, the findings could be used to arrive at solutions that will boost revenue generation and improve per-capita GDP. The basic problem which this paper seeks to answer is what is the relationship between firm attributes and tax non-compliance? What are the Gaps identified from the analysis? What areas of study could be explored to bridge Gap identified? The research effort utilizes a literature survey and analysis of content to arrive at an inference. Therefore, this study intends to review existing literature on the relationship between (firm’s size, financial leverage, capital intensity, corporate reputation and intangible intensity) tax noncompliance to identify research gaps and frontiers for further research with a view to finding lasting solutions to tax noncompliance, which would boost revenue generation and improve per-capita GDP. The basic problem which this paper seeks to answer is what is the relationship between firm attributes and tax non-compliance? What are the Gaps identified from the analysis? What areas of study could be explored to bridge Gap identified? The findings indicate that there exists a relationship between firm attributes and tax noncompliance, however mixed findings were found in some studies. The study recommends further research in firm attributes and tax noncompliance with a view to understanding the reaction to specific attributes to tax noncompliance to inform accurate decision making on tax noncompliance issues.