The association of tax education and tax compliance: A case of UUM accounting students

Making taxpayer Comply with tax payment has not been easy to for any government. Many eligible taxpayers do not comply with their tax obligations annually which probably emanates from lack of basic knowledge on taxation and low compliance morale. When people are ignorant of tax laws, they will find it difficult to comply with the tax laws, especially in relation to tax computation. They may also be ignorant of how taxation revenue contributes towards funding government's day to day activities. In order to have citizens with the basic knowledge on taxation laws, and how taxation revenue contributes to development, taxation education is therefore imperative. Through education, individual can acquire new knowledge, which in turn can influence their
behaviour or morale reasoning. Having said that, this study examines how taxation courses taught in Universiti Utara Malaysia, influence the tax compliance morale of the undergraduate accounting students. It also explores the perceptions of the taxation instructors on the relevance of taxation courses in creating tax compliance morale. Mixed method of data collection was applied. Questionnaires were administered to 122 undergraduate accounting students, while interviews were conducted with four taxation lecturers. Overall findings indicate that taxation education has an association with tax compliance. Taxation education impacts the basic tax knowledge of those who attended the classes. Findings also show that the lecturers interviewed are of the opinion that inclusion of taxation course in the syllabus of non-accounting students can go a long in changing the mindset of future taxpayers. The study recommends the inclusion of ethics in the principles of taxation and tax morale case studies. There is a limitation in this study from not using a greater number of respondents during the survey