Olufemi Adebayo Oladipo, Samuel Adeniran Fakile, Joseph Olufemi Ogunjobi, Adenike Omowumi Oladipo, Abimbola Oluwaseyi Ademola
The importance of tax proceeds in operation and undertakings of any government in the whole world cannot be over emphasized because taxes had been categorised as one of the critical sources of government revenue of any nation. Taxation is the most unstable and sophisticated issues in governance both in the evolving and technologically advanced countries. The basic ethical problem underlying this study is the extent of corporate tax evasion (non-tax compliance) among listed Nigerian manufacturing companies. It is based on this problem that this study examined the effect of tax audit on tax compliance behaviour of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria. Based on this objective, some research questions were posed, hypotheses were formulated, and a thorough analysis of relevant literature was undertaken. This study adopted a survey research method, and 400 copies of the questionnaire were administered to the selected 10 consumer goods companies and 10 industrial goods companies. Correlation analysis, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Multiple Regression analysis were also employed. The study found tax audit as a significant predictor (0.003) of tax compliance with t-value of 2.978 at 5% level significant. The study, therefore, recommends that the government take into account non-economic variables such as trust, and corporate ethical tax conduct as a prerequisite for government supply contracts. The study therefore concluded that the amount of taxes paid should be by taxpayer’s ability to pay based on the amount of income or profit generated and design an effective tax audit regulation.