The Challenges Affecting Tax Collection in Nigerian Informal Economy: Case Study of Anambra State

The Federal and State Governments might not be able to provide infrastructural development for its citizens if the citizens do not pay tax. Successive government officers and tax administrators in Nigeria have come up with different programs on how to increase tax collection. Each of these programs have proved unsuccessful due to lack of accountability, poor awareness and publicity, and poor implementation. Recently, Anambra state took the unusually step of developing a digital (online) business registration to capture taxpayers in the Informal Economy (IE). This digital registration called, Anambra Social Service Identity Number (ANSSID) have witnessed massive success. Despite the increase in number of business registration, businesses and employees in the IE are finding it difficult to pay tax in Anambra State. By using semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis, this study identified the reason why employees and traders in the IE in Anambra State are not willing to pay tax. In total, 35 business owners, managers, accountants, and employees from different industries were interviewed in Anambra State. The reason for using Anambra state is that in the past few years, the state government has been looking for strategic ways to increase revenue in the informal economy, including tax reforms with the introduction of Anambra State Social Service Identity (ANSSID) number which the state has adopted as part of its strategies to pull all taxable adult into the tax-net. This research contributes and offers guidance to policy makers on how to improve tax revenue in the state. This study found that lack of provision of amenities and infrastructural development are among the reasons why many traders and employees do not pay tax in Anambra State, Nigeria, as they have to bear the burden for the provision of such amenities themselves. Lack of accountability, embezzlement, poor accounting records, deficit of empowerment programs and absence of awareness are the key reasons why people and businesses in IE do not pay tax. Recommendations were made to help policy makers improve their tax revenue

The Role of Board in Corporate Social Responsibility: A Normative Compliance Perspective

Purpose: This paper focuses on the board’s influence on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) among Public Liability Companies (PLCs). The paper uses normative compliance theory to develop the theoretical framework thereby advocating and complementing other theories CSR. Methodology: The paper adopts balanced random effect regression model to estimate the relationship between board characteristics (such as board composition, diversity and size on CSR, while controlling for firm size, sector and risk). This involved the use of balanced panel data of 174 PLCs from 2003 to 2009. The random effect estimator is used to test the specific effects of the board composition, board size and board diversity on CSR of PLCs in Nigeria. The data are obtained from Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) fact book from 2003 to 2009. Findings: The paper found that Non-executive directors (NEDs) and board size are positively significantly correlated with CSR, while the executive director was negative and significantly related with CSR. Originality: The testing of the theory in the context of Nigeria contributes to the body of knowledge on sub-Sahara Africa, particularly Nigeria which offers a developing country perspective. The paper explores the relationship between board characteristics and CSR thereby contributing to the governance processes of listed companies and how good governance should be encouraged by understanding the board dynamics. Study Contribution: The implication is that, for managers and corporations focusing on shareholder interest, must also acknowledge that the society wants companies to accommodate multiple stakeholders interest for them to compete and survive in the long run. Social Implication: The social implications for companies to understand that business and the society are interwoven. Also efforts should be made by the board and companies to be morally and socially responsible to the society. Limitations: The data employed for this paper is majorly limited to listed companies on the NSE and the study covers only firms and industrial sectors within a single country but do not cover country to country differences or factors. It nevertheless presents implications for understanding CSR challenges in developing markets and provides insights into how to structure the board of listed companies. Finally, we hope this paper encourages future studies on the board dynamics and social performance of companies

Is the Bandwagon Bias Effect Theory Driving Institutional Investors Impact on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Practices?

This paper employs the bandwagon bias effect theory to explain the influence of institutional investors on CSR Practices. This study focuses on Nigeria and uses the bandwagon bias theory to explore how institutional investors are being influenced by peer and society pressure to go along with the crowd to conform to CSR industrial standards. Using the balanced panel data of 174 PLCs from 2003 to 2009, the study investigates the institutional investors influence on CSR. The findings indicate a significant manifestation of relationship between them, which implies that the bandwagon effect on firm’s CSR engagement exists

Designing fuzzy rule based classifier using self-organizing feature map for analysis of multispectral satellite images

We propose a novel scheme for designing fuzzy rule based classifier. An SOFM based method is used for generating a set of prototypes which is used to generate a set of fuzzy rules. Each rule represents a region in the feature space that we call the context of the rule. The rules are tuned with respect to their context. We justified that the reasoning scheme may be different in different context leading to context sensitive inferencing. To realize context sensitive inferencing we used a softmin operator with a tunable parameter. The proposed scheme is tested on several multispectral satellite image data sets and the performance is found to be much better than the results reported in the literature.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figure