Philip Lignier

University of Tasmania · Tasmanian School of business and economics

The most recent, significant tax reform review in Australia, popularly known as the Henry Review, was publicly released just over six years ago. This article provides a critical examination of Australia's experience in tax complexity management since the Henry Review. Two main observations are put forward. First, not surprisingly, very few of the H...

Concern about the size and the regressive nature of taxation compliance costs for small businesses has prompted many governments to introduce special tax concessions and regimes for that sector of the economy. This article reports on exploratory research conducted in four countries (Australia, Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom) in 2010-11...

Tax compliance inevitably requires taxpayers to incur costs, often significant, to fulfill their tax obligations. This paper reports on the tax compliance burden of Australian personal taxpayers in the 2011-12 tax year, using the refined Sandford methodology. The scope of the study is confined to individual taxpayers whose main income is not derive...

This paper presents the results of a survey that has collected fresh data about the compliance burden imposed by the tax system upon small business taxpayers in Australia. The study is one part of an international research project which is evaluating and comparing tax compliance costs affecting the small business sector across four countries. In ad...

Managerial benefits of tax compliance have been identified by many authors in the tax compliance costs literature; they have however often been ignored when measuring the net effect of tax compliance on business taxpayers because it was believed that the measurement of such benefits was impossible or difficult. This paper first discusses the theore...

Research undertaken in 2006 – 2007 investigated the perception of managerial benefits of tax compliance by small business taxpayers. Survey data from a sample of 300 small business taxpayers and responses to semi-structured interviews of owner managers were examined. The study found that a majority of small business taxpayers recognised that tax co...

This paper considers the potential managerial benefits that a small business taxpayer may derive as a result of undertaking tax compliance work. Managerial benefits are expected to come in the form of improved information systems, improved controls, or savings on accountant costs or other compliance costs. The scarce empirical evidence on manageria...

Empirical research carried out in different countries provides strong evidence that tax compliance costs impact more heavily on small firms. In addition, results showed that the regressivity of tax compliance costs according to size was even more accentuated after taking into consideration the effects of the cash flow and tax deductibility benefits...