Accounting and Tax Compliance Behaviours of Ethnic and Indigenous
Entrepreneurs: A New Zealand Perspective
Discussant
Danture Wickramasinghe
University of Glasgow, UK
Based on 59 interviews with 36 entrepreneurs from a faction of ethnic minority
in New Zealand, this paper tries to argue that a particular culture has produced
non-compliant behaviours with respect to taxation on SMEs. In so doing, the
paper speaks to the tax compliance literature where the notion of tax compliance
is seen in terms of taxpayers’ inclination to record keeping, use of tax assistance,
cash management and relationships with tax authorities. For migrated citizens
are subject to host country’s prevailing tax laws and authorities, author’s
argument stems from a structural thesis that the prevailing tax laws and
authorities have paid little attention to the issue of multiculturalism being
aggravated through the high flows of migration from Asian and Pacific regions to
New Zealand. In order to substantiate this thesis, the paper uses Hofstead’s
perspectives on cultural values. Finally, it establishes some policy prescriptions
for better tax compliance behaviours. While I believe this is an interesting theme
for a critical accounting work, the present version of the paper needs massive
revisions in its all aspects. I appreciate that it is still at a developmental stage.
The following comments would help improve this version.
Firstly, despite the broader contextual accounts of migration issues that result in
multiculturalism and non-compliant problems in tax administration is relevant,
the voice of this paper represents the tax authorities rather than cultural
minorities. If the authors (if there were a few) were motivated to produce a
critical accounting work, I thought that this would have been written to
represent the minorities’ voice which we once called subaltern’s voice
(Alawattage and Wickramasinghe, 2009) rather than the “masters’ voice” which
seek “solutions to tax administration issues. If we want to take the former’s
perspective, I would articulate how and why such non-compliant behavior is
produced and reproduced. At the moment, from the tone of the paper, I read that
the author is motivated by the issue of criminal behaviors of migrated
communities in developed countries. So, s/he seeks a solution to the problem
from Hofsteadian analysis!
Secondly, due to the lack of a clear “vision” towards critical research, little has
been found from the literature review to derive an interesting question around
how and why such non-compliant behaviors can be understood. While works by
Boden and her followers are relevant, I cannot see a systematic engagement in
the literature to articulate the taxpayers’ voice. Even though it has started to
worry about the positivistic research tradition, I cannot see an alternative
framework being developed from the literature to locate the question that
represents the taxpayers’ voice. Despite the rudimentary attempt in the
literature review, the outcome of the paper does not match with the aims for it
has ended up with a set of policy prescriptions rather than a theoretical
contribution.
Thirdly, while I like the qualitative methodology that aims to produce
interpretive accounts of the communities’ views, I have two practical issues here.
On the one hand, I cannot see how this “fieldwork” was actually conducted. What
are the protocols being adopted? If this was a fieldwork to reveal cultural
dimensions, what was this culture like? How can we understand it? On the other
hand, given the volume of 59 face-to face interviews, how were they coded and
analyzed? Apart from the primacy of “family”, I cannot see any other theme being
emerged from a systematic coding procedure. In short, I cannot find much “data”
in the “findings”. This section needs a major development (for example, see how
this is done in Wickramasinghe and Hopper, 2005; Efferin and Hopper, 2007).
Fourthly, for the Hofstedian framework has face severe critiques from
sociological and anthropological corners (see Baskerville, 2003, 2005 and Efferin
and Hopper, 2007; McSweeney, 2002; Wickramasinghe and Hopper, 2005), the
authors must think about how Hosftede’s statistical generalizations to national
cultures can be used to analyze a local community. In contrast, I thought that
there is an “art of not being governed” (see James Scott, 2009) where there is a
“state” of extended families which is to be “seeing like a sate” (Scott, 1998). This
“state” develops its “habitus” and maintain a “logic of practice” (Bourdieu, 1980)
leading to these so-called non-compliant behaviours. However, I am not sure if
the authors have sufficient ethnographic accounts to substantiate this theoretical
argument. Can’t this happen even amongst the rest of the population when
people face poverty? Wouldn’t be a “global” issue in “black” economies at all?
How can we believe that ethnicity produces non-compliant behaviours? These
empirical issues need to be clear before starting to articulate such a theoretical
analysis, however.
Finally, I appreciate that this paper is at a very infant state of development. When
it is advanced, it must be a longer than a paper of 22 pages. It may comprise a
better literate review section followed by a “suitable” theoretical framework,
detailed section on research methods, a theoretically inspired empirical
analyses, and a conclusion that that concludes how this make a contribution to
critical/interpretive research in tax-compliance behavior within a “subaltern”
community (see 2009 AAAJ special issue on Accounting and Subalternity).
References
Baskerville, R. F. (2003), "Hofstede never studied culture", Accounting,
Organizations and Society, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 1-14.
Baskerville, R. F. (2005), "A research note: the unfinished business of culture",
Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 389-391.
Douglas, M. (1982), "Introduction to grid/group analysis", in Douglas, M. (Ed.),
Essays in the Sociology of Perception. Routledge & Keagan Paul, London,
pp. 1-8.
Efferin, S. and Hopper, T. (2007), "Management control, culture and ethnicity in a
Chinese Indonesian company", Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol.
32 No. 3, pp. 223-262.
McSweeney, B. (2002), "Hofstede's model of national cultural differences and
their consequences: a triumph of faith – a failure of analysis", Human
Relations, Vol. 55 No. 1, pp. 89-118.
Scott, J. (1998) Seeing Like a Sate, Yale, USA.
Scott, J. (2009), The Art of not being Governed, Yale, USA.
Wickramasinghe, D. and Hopper, T. (2005), "A cultural political economy of
management accounting controls: a case study of a textile Mill in a
traditional Sinhalese village", Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Vol. 16
No. 4, pp. 473-503.