Tax professionals' perception of tax system complexity: Some preliminary empirical evidence from Portugal

• Published in: eJournal of Tax Research
• Main Author: Borrego A.C.; Loo E.C.; Lopes C.M.M.; Ferreira C.M.S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of New South Wales 2015
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84930358014&partnerID=40&md5=79f8d59cd7b92e1f0f18e66f8c619a21

This paper analyses tax professionals' (TOCs) perception of tax complexity within the Portuguese fiscal system. This study is relevant to the international tax literature research for two reasons. Firstly, its intention is to determine the dimensions of the endogenous causes of tax complexity, creating indices of these causes using the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method. Secondly, it aims to identify the factors that could influence the level of tax complexity perceived by TOCs. In 2013, a survey was conducted in Portugal to evaluate TOCs' perception of tax complexity. This paper presents the results collected from 994 questionnaires responded to by TOCs. The survey findings concluded that TOCs perceived three dimensions of causes of tax complexity: «Legal Complexity»; «Complexity of Preparation of Information and Record Keeping»; and «Complexity of Tax Forms». The exogenous factors include tax knowledge, with a negative effect, and size of companies, with a positive effect on TOCs' perception of tax complexity. Understanding these relationships can be a key issue for tax policy makers, in order to reduce their negative effects on the perception of tax complexity. Therefore, this paper contributes to the international tax literature by presenting empirical evidence concerning the dimensions of tax complexity.