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of tax revenue, Jordan government is haunted by a high rate of tax non-compliance behaviour that cost around JD1.4 billion in 2017. Thus, revealing the factors that determine the compliance behaviour has become imperative. Therefore, this study investigates the possible factors of tax compliance among SMEs in Jordan with consideration of trust in government as a moderator. The conceptual framework of this study include sales tax compliance behaviour as the dependent variable and the antecedents are tax knowledge, tax fairness, tax morale, tax authority, tax rate, and tax penalties. The population of this study is the small and medium size firms (SMEs) in Amman, Jordan. Approximately 59.9 percent (8,485 firms) of Jordanian SMEs are located in the capital city of Amman and the suitable sample size based on Morgan-Kerjice formula is 373. Unit of analysis for this research is the company principals (owners, CEOs, Financial managers) of the SMEs. The study adopts the direct collect survey technique to reach a relatively specific-target sample of SME principals. For data analysis, SmartPLS is used to do the regression-based analysis, but SPSS is used for data cleaning, demographic and descriptive analysis. Tax fairness has no significant impact while the other five antecedents have significant impacts. The precedence for the relations based on the path coefficient value is tax penalty (0.436), tax rate (0.233), tax authority (0.199), TK (0.142), and tax morale (0.103). Government trust have a significant moderation in two relationships that associated with tax authority and tax rate. KEYWORDS: tax compliance behaviour, tax knowledge, tax fairness, tax morale, tax authority, tax rate, tax penalties, trust in government, Jordan

Over the years, past research has revealed that human nature is continuously evolving. Inevitably, this evolution is further extended to individuals' adoption towards a new set of consumption behaviour. In the current global coronavirus pandemic (termed COVID 19), consumers are further contemplating on alternative forms of payment in pursuit of a safer method to purchase goods and services. Contactless payments, for example, have proven to provide benefits to both businesses and consumers alike, in terms of higher levels of control and convenience for consumers, and higher return on investment (ROI) for business merchants. Following this concern, this study was conducted to investigate the extent to which perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, social influence, trust, convenience, and fear affect consumers' attitude towards the use of contactless payment. It also aims to examine whether attitude influences consumers' intention towards the use of contactless transactions. Using a non-probability sampling technique, data were collected from 200 respondents via online questionnaire survey distribution. A total of 185 usable data were analysed using Smart PLS 3.0 statistical software package. Several findings were established and discussed further. © 2021. Lennora PUTIT, Amirah AHMAD SUKI, Mohamad Fariz ABDULLAH, Norsiah AHMAD, Nor Fazalina SALLEH and Nini Hartini ASMAWI.

This study examines the effect of Malaysia’s domestic taxation policy, price and exchange competitiveness with neighboring countries on international tourism demand in Malaysia based on the quantile estimation. Using monthly-based time series data, which set over the period of 1996-2017, we adopt the bootstrap quantile regression model to provide a comprehensive relationship of international tourism demand theory in Malaysia. The empirical results show that sales tax has a negative relationship with international inbound tourism demand, mainly at the middle quantile stages. Moreover, we also found that price competition from Thailand has a positive influence on Malaysia’s tourism demand; and appreciation of Indonesia’s exchange rate competitiveness tends to lead Malaysia’s tourism demand. These empirical findings open up new insights for policymakers in Malaysia as to how to improve fiscal policies and enhance continual increase of international inbound tourism demand in the upcoming years.

This paper examines the reporting of Key Audit Matters (KAMs) in independent auditor‟s report for construction sector in the Malaysian market. It also aims to identify whether the specific characteristics of construction company will influence the KAMs reporting for Malaysian companies. The sample covers all construction companies listed on Bursa Malaysia with available data one year upon the implementation of KAMs. This business sector has been the subject of the study due to the fact that construction sector, despite being a high-risk sector, is among important sectors that contribute to the development of the economy of a country. The objective of the study is achieved through content analysis. The maximum and minimum number of KAMs disclosed are six and one respectively for this sector. The main issue addressed as KAMs in construction sector is revenue. The revenue recognition in the construction sector is affected by the unexpected occurrences and this, in turn, will affect the estimated cost and profit. The findings discover that the practice on the KAMs disclosed has been critically assessed by the auditors, but there is exception on some of the practice. In the construction sector, the items listed as KAMs basically relates to areas that required a significant amount of judgement from auditors (matters that involve high uncertainty estimation). However, for some of the KAMsdisclosure, 24% of the sample do not highlight the reason of why the items listed as KAMs. This circumstance would provide questions whether auditors had dismissed the guidelines of the disclosure of KAMs or auditors did not understand the KAMs‟ practices comprehensively. Therefore, further monitoring is needed to ensure the successful implementation of KAMs. This study only covers a limited sample of one year upon implementation of KAMs. It provides an empirical data and description on Key audit matters (KAMs) disclosure in the independent auditor‟s report of the Malaysian Listed company.

Recent audit and financial reporting quality research suggest that audit committee financial expertise is a crucial ingredient for high quality financial reports. However, Malaysian literature has reported no association between audit committee financial expertise and audit report timeliness. Using audit report lag, we examined whether Malaysian audit committee financial expertise is relevant for financial reporting timeliness. Using data from 2005 to 2011 from the top 100 Malaysian companies and the fixed effects panel data approach, we find that audit committee financial expertise is not significantly associated with audit report lag proxies. We further examined this issue with the basic premise that audit committee independence enhances the role of audit committee financial expertise. However, the interaction between these mechanisms shows an insignificant association. Additional investigation reveals that these results are driven by the lack of independence on Malaysian boards. We also find evidence suggesting that neither a large number of subsidiaries nor the quality of financial reporting sufficiently justify the recent Malaysian reforms relating to the financial reporting timeframe.

Online food delivery services have experienced tremendous growth in the food industry. Food delivery apps had gathered this opportunity adjusting to restaurant and food delivery services as an alternative to increasing income and for customers to remotely order their foods. This study aims to determine the relationship between information quality, performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influence with continuous use intention of food delivery apps from Malaysian young adults’ context. In this study, a total of 300 sets of questionnaires were successfully collected. The data was interpreted using SPSS Version 25. At the end of the study, it was found that the results of the analysis to be a positive relationship between information quality, performance expectancy and social influence with continuous use intention of food delivery apps among young adults. This study also revealed that social influence as the most influential factor affecting continuous use intention of food delivery apps.

This study attempts to investigate the impact of economic growth and stock traded on taxation for emerging Asian countries, namely China, India, Indonesia, Republic of Korea, Malaysia and Thailand. To examine the plausible links between these indicators, we used semi-parametric, heterogeneous and panel causality analysis by employing data covering the period 1990–2014. The semi-parametric estimates indicate a U-shape effect between growth and taxation, along with elastic opposite direction effects of stock traded on taxation. This suggests that higher growth will have a positive influence on taxation in emerging Asian countries. The findings of the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (DH) heterogeneous Granger causality test revealed that there is a bi-directional causality running between growth and taxation, and a uni-directional causality running from stock traded to taxation,and from growth to stock traded.This confirms the presence of a growth-led taxation nexus in emerging Asian countries.

This study focuses on Saudi’s unique social and cultural context and its impact on board attributes and corporate risk disclosure (CRD) by addressing the relationship between royal family members on the board and CRD. Using content analysis of a sample of 307 company-year observations over the period of 2008-2011, the results from the descriptive statistics show a moderate level of CRD practices among firms. The initial and additional results from the panel data analysis show that board characteristics, namely, board size, board independence, royal family members on the board, and meeting frequency of the board of directors are important determinants of CRD in Saudi Arabia. The positive influence of royal family members on CRD in this study contradicts the classic negative relationship between family members on the board and disclosure, which indicates that not all types of families’ members on the board have the same motivation towards corporate disclosure.

The area of customer co-production behaviour has an impressive body of research devoted to comprehending a range of perspectives and theories related to this area. However, relatively little research have examined through the perspective of service dominant logic and underpinned self-determination theory to understand the customer co-production behaviour. The customer's role is active and participative because as an individual, a customer has the potential to act and influence the productivity and the outcome of service. Customer co-production behaviour is defined as the determination and willingness of a customer to participate actively in terms of his time and effort with the service provider in the service inception and production stages. This study applies the self-determination theory and an adapted version of the co-production model by Etgar (2008) to explain co-production behaviour in service provision. For the research, the context of building projects is appropriate to investigate this phenomenon because it is complex and time-related, hence requires customers’ perseverance to engage in the co-production process. A pre-study exploratory research, television programme analysis, interviews with the council officer and informants who have experience in building projects were conducted prior to determining the research model. Online and mail surveys were administered to a group of 275 participants who were willing to share their personal experiences in building projects. A customer's openness to experience, agreement and emotional stability traits has a positive effect on feeling competent about the activities that he/she wants to participate in, and he/she feels the self-efficacy to co-produce with the providers. The conscientiousness trait is relevant to susceptibility to control. The value anticipation construct has a relationship with agreement and conscientiousness. However, extraversion traits do not show any significant relationship with the customer autonomous motivation to participate actively in service provision. Next, autonomous motivation was shown to be a valid predictor to customer co-production behaviour. Finally, the findings also showed intrinsic rewards had a positive relationship as the outcome of customer co-production behavior. This study concluded that the self-determination theory and perspective of service dominant logic are useful in explaining the primary role of customers’ co-production behaviour in core product offering.

Purpose – This paper aims to hypothesise that demographic characteristics of managers play a significant role in performing their duties amongst which is financial reporting. This study aims to examine whether CEO characteristics, namely, tenure and financial expertise, are associated with audit report timeliness. Design/methodology/approach – Data from companies listed on the Oman capital market between 2007 and 2011 and three proxies for audit report timeliness are used. Findings – CEO tenure and CEOs with financial expertise are reported to be associated with timely audit reports. Supplementary tests also confirmed this result. In addition, it is suggested and documented that there is an interaction effect between CEO tenure and financial expertise concerning the timeliness of audit reports. The use of a two-stage least square analysis also supported the main results. Research limitations/implications – Hypotheses were tested using data from Oman with a relatively small sample size. Therefore, only a few characteristics of the CEO were considered and a more sophisticated approach of testing managers’ effect on company policies was unable to be used. In addition, the generalisability of the study findings should be made carefully. Originality/value – This paper differs from prior studies, in that it extends the audit report timeliness literature by examining whether the CEO tenure and CEOs with financial expertise are associated with audit report timeliness. Findings demonstrate that CEO characteristics are important factors for a timely audit report.

A high level of tax morale is necessary in promoting tax compliance among the public, including youth who tend to have a low sense of responsibility. The current tax system and working youth segment of Malaysia are first explained. Based on the relevant literature on taxation, important factors that influence trust and the resulting tax compliance are conceptualized in a research model. An online survey was administered on youth throughout Malaysia that resulted in 2,030 usable responses, of which 500 were used in testing the model. The empirical results from using partial least squares analysis show that one of the two trust variables and tax knowledge are significant determinants of tax compliance. In addition, youth in the registered taxpayers group exhibited a greater level of compliance intention than non-registered youth.

This study investigates the feasibility of outsourcing tax audit work in Malaysian tax system to enhance administration efficiency, to curb tax evasion and abusive avoidance, and to improve revenue collection without introducing a new tax. The current tax audit, carried out by internal auditors of Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia, could only be performed on a small numbers of taxpayers due to high administrative cost in terms of audit cost and cost to employ and train more audit personnel. Nevertheless, without tax audit, tax non-compliance activity could not be curbed and government would be at high risk of losing its revenue. One of the possible ways to increase audit work is through strategic outsourcing. However, decision to outsource tax work should be critically examined because outsourcing of tax audit is a policy that could potentially affect every taxpayer. This paper discusses the views of the stakeholders (tax authorities, the taxpayers and tax agents) on the value of tax audit outsourcing. Using a mixed method approach, this study finds contradicting opinions on the idea of implementing external tax audit in Malaysia. While the tax authorities are hesitant to the idea, the companies as tax payers and the tax agents show favorable responds to the implementation of outsourced tax audit in Malaysia. Keywords: Outsourcing; income tax; tax audit; tax compliance; Malaysia ABSTRAK Kajian ini mengkaji kesesuaian penggunaan penyumberan luar audit cukai dalam sistem percukaian di Malaysia untuk meningkatkan kecekapan pentadbiran, menyekat pengelakan dan pelarian cukai serta meningkat pendapatan tanpa perlu memperkenal cukai baru. Audit cukai semasa yang dijalankan oleh juruadit dalaman Lembaga Hasil Dalam Negeri Malaysia hanya boleh dilaksanakan ke atas sebilangan kecil pembayar cukai disebabkan kos pentadbiran yang tinggi merangkumi kos menjalankan audit dan kos menggaji dan melatih juruaudit baru. Walau bagaimanpun, tanpa audit cukai, aktiviti ketidakpatuhan cukai tidak akan dapat dibendung dan pihak kerajaan akan menanggung risiko kehilangan pendapatan yang tinggi. Salah satu cara untuk menambah bilangan audit adalah melalui penyumberan luar strategik. Namun, keputusan untuk memperkenalkan penyumberan luar audit cukai perlu diteliti kerana ia merupakan satu polisi yang boleh memberikan kesan kepada semua pembayar cukai. Artikel ini menggarap pandangan pemegang taruhan (pentadbir cukai, pembayar cukai dan agen cukai) terhadap nilai penyumberan luar audit cukai. Dengan menggunakan gabungan kaedah penyelidikan, kajian ini mendapati terdapat pendapat yang berbeza terhadap ide melaksanakan penyumberan luar audit cukai di Malaysia. Walaupun pentadbir cukai didapati kurang menyokong ide ini, syarikat sebagai pembayar cukai serta agen cukai didapati memberi respon yang positif terhadap pelaksanaan penyumberan luar audit cukai di Malaysia. Kata kunci: Penyumberan luar; cukai pendapatan; audit cukai; pematuhan cukai; Malaysia

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between fraudulent financial reporting and firms' characteristics, i.e. size, type of ownership and audit quality in companies audited by the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (IRBM) after the implementation of a self assessment system in Malaysia.Design/methodology/approachThe paper employs an empirical research design, using data on companies audited by IRBM. The hypotheses of the study are tested using both univariate and multivariate statistical methods.FindingsIt was found that company size and audit quality have significant negative relationships with fraudulent financial reporting.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample of companies used in this study is unlisted companies and the results are not generalisable to listed companies. Listed companies may have more stringent rules for listing and have better corporate governance mechanisms within the company as control.Practical implicationsThe paper's findings may assist IRBM in identifying possible cases for audit in the future.Originality/valueThe paper describes the first empirical study that uses real tax cases where the non‐compliance with the Malaysian statues and tax laws are used as the measurement of the fraudulent financial reporting.

This study examines whether audit committee chair with financial expertise enhances the audit committee role in financial reporting quality in emerging market. We investigate this influence by employing the direct effect and moderating effect of audit committee chair with financial expertise on financial reporting timeliness. By using Omani data and the panel data method for two proxies for financial reporting timeliness, we find that audit committee chair with financial expertise enhances the timeliness of financial reporting through making the disclosure of annual reports timely. Further, we report evidence showing that both accounting and nonaccounting financial expertise on the audit committee have a positive and significant influence on the timeliness of financial reporting. We also document that the association between financial expertise and the timeliness of financial reporting is more pronounced when the chair of the audit committee has accounting expertise. This study is among the comprehensive evidence prove that audit committee chair with accounting expertise contributes to the quality of financial reporting in emerging market.

The objective of this study is to explore the unique setting of Oman with respect to audit quality. This study measures the quality of audit by examining whether big-4 audit firms and industry specialist auditors have a role in improving the quality of the audit. We use data from the companies listed on the Oman capital market between 2006-2013. Using a panel data approach and two measures of audit quality for the purpose of this study, we find that the audit quality of big-4 audit firms and industry specialist auditors is low because they do not enhance the quality of discretionary accruals and do not have a propensity to issue going-concern audit opinion. We also document that big-4 audit firms and industry specialist auditors consider that religion and risk factors provide the means for achieving high-quality audit. This paper is different from prior studies because it is the first to comprehensively examine audit quality in a unique setting - the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Furthermore, it extends our understanding of the role of religiosity in audit quality.

This study explores Corporate Risk Disclosure practices (CRD) in the annual reports of Saudi (non-financial) listed companies and investigates the relationship between the Saudi firm-specific characteristics and the level of such practices. Using content analysis of a sample of 307 company-year observations over the period of 2008-2011, the results indicate that Saudi Arabia provides a moderate level of CRD among the developed and developing countries. However, the content of this CRD is found to be of a low quality, by including non-financial, qualitative, neutral, or non-time-specific information. In addition, the unbalanced panel regression analysis shows a significant positive influence of firm size and audit firm size on the level of CRD. This indicates that Saudi companies which disclose higher risk-related information are those characterised by their larger size, and are audited by the Big 4 audit firms. This study contributes to the risk literature by providing an initial understanding of the CRD practices and their variations in light of the firm-specific characteristics in emerging markets in general and Arab countries in particular..

Fraudulent financial reporting has become an important issue in accounting profession. The implementation of self assessment system appears as incentives to companies to misstate their financial reports to reduce tax obligation. Fraudulent financial reporting may cause vast losses to government income, as well as losses to the users of financial reports. This study examines the relationship between fraudulent financial reporting and firms' characteristics that are size, types of ownership and types of auditor in companies audited by Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (IRB). This study uses political cost theory to explain fraudulent financial reporting in companies. The study found that company size and audit quality have significant negative relationships with fraudulent financial reporting. Findings from this study may assist IRB in identifying possible cases for audit in the future.

This study reviews the literature on audit committee expertise and financial reporting timeliness. Financial reporting timeliness and audit committee expertise are two areas of research gaining the attention of a large number of stakeholders because they contribute to the reliability and the relevancy of financial reporting. Indeed, the focus of this review is primarily on the recent developments in the pertinent literature in order to show the limitations of such research and encourage future research to overcome these limitations. By also looking at the development of the audit committee expertise literature, this study concludes that (1) like most audit committee literature, financial reporting timeliness literature continues to assume the absence of the contribution of expertise other than financial expertise, and ignore the role of audit committee chair; (2) most of this literature fails to find a significant effect because it ignores the interaction among corporate governance mechanisms. Accordingly, this study posits that ignoring the issues raised in such research by future research would lead to major mistakes in reforms relating to how the quality of financial reporting can be enhanced.