Working hard for the money : tax noncompliance in the small building and construction industry

The closing decades of the 20th century saw significant policy developments in the movement to improve business compliance with regulatory and tax requirements. Previously, controversy about whether a more or less interventionalist approach was needed dominated discussions of and proposals to enhance regulation. At the core of the debate were the theoretical assumptions about the motivations driving compliance. Advocates of the more interventional approach referred to as command-and-control regulation assume self-interest motivates compliance and a fear of sanctions deters noncompliance. Those arguing for a less interventional approach known as cooperative regulation assume civic duty, moral beliefs, fairness and legitimacy of government determine compliance. More recently, regulatory and tax agencies have adopted a convergence of the two approaches known as responsive regulation. Responsive regulation suggests a wide range of motivations from inadvertent error to self-interest influence compliance and, thus, require a broad scope of interventions beginning with dialogue aimed at securing and maintaining engagement in the regulatory process and ending with a willingness to resort to sanctions when other efforts fail. Investigation into motivations that influence compliance, especially in the tax arena, have been limited because of the recency of developments. The available research, however, tends to support the basic assumptions of responsive regulation. Drawing from interviews with 25 owners of small building and construction firms, the current study provides an increased understanding of compliance in an industry well recognized for noncompliant taxpayers. Specifically, it explores participants\u27 taxpaying behaviors and the motivations driving their taxpaying and then compares their taxpaying compliance with compliance in other regulatory areas. Results suggest that taxpaying among the participants is a complex and dynamic process which will probably not be accounted for by one theoretical model, that the tenets of responsive regulation may be the more efficacious intervention and that the tradition of criminological research may serve well to inform future regulatory and tax compliance research

Just A Little Respect: Authority And Competency In Women’s Speech

Young women have conflicting motivations directing how they use pitch, vocal fry, and uptalk intonation. High pitch and uptalk may emphasize their femininity, but low pitch and vocal fry are associated with better leadership. Thus, it is difficult to predict how young women will speak in a particular situation. This thesis measures how 16 young women used pitch, vocal fry, and uptalk in three different speech styles collected through videoconferencing calls. Surveys determined how the changes in speech affected the listener’s judgments of the speaker. The lowest average pitch was in interview style speech and the largest range of pitch in casual style speech. The young women used more uptalk in interview style speech than in presentation or casual speech. The highest amount of fry was in presentation style speech. Male participants were more likely than female participants to judge a speaker using uptalk as less competent

Investigating sustainability in a Tasmanian community through the lived experience of local secondary school students

This thesis takes the reader on a journey to the Tasman Peninsula, a small and remote district in Tasmania, Australia. I enter the community through the local school, where I work with Grade Nine classes to explore prospects of sustainability in their community through the students’ lived experiences. The inquiry develops propositions that model Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion as a basis for understanding community dynamics in times of external forces that threaten community sustainability

Harsh and variable ecological conditions modulate the relationship between social structure and direct fitness in a plurally breeding small mammal

Evidence suggests that harsh and variable environmental conditions modulate the fitness benefits associated with increased group size in some species. Social network analysis is a more powerful approach to examine this relationship, as the quality of interactions is more important than quantity. Using 9 years of data, I determined how mean and coefficient of variation (CV) of nine ecological variables modulated the relationship between social network metrics on direct fitness in the plurally breeding rodent, Octodon degus. As predicted, increased social structure was most beneficial when food abundance was more variable, mean monthly rainfall was highest, predator abundance was more variable, soil hardness was more variable, and ectoparasitic flea intensity was low and more variable. In contrast, the observed effect of the CV of burrow density and mean food abundance on the relationship between strength and direct fitness contradicted our predictions. Overall, our results illustrate that the harshness and unpredictability of ecological conditions are not mutually exclusive explanations for social structure-direct fitness covariation

THE EFFECTS OF HEALTH ON HEALTH INSURANCE STATUS IN FRAGILE FAMILIES

We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study to estimate the effects of poor infant health, pre-pregnancy health conditions of the mother, and the father’s health status on health insurance status of urban, mostly unmarried, mothers and their one-year-old children. Virtually all births were covered by health insurance, but one year later about one third of mothers and over 10 percent of children were uninsured. We separately examine births that were covered by public insurance and those that were covered by private insurance. The child’s health status had no effect, for the most part, on whether the mother or child became uninsured. For publicly insured births, a maternal physical health condition made it less likely that both the mother and child became uninsured, while maternal mental illness made it more likely that both the mother and child lost insurance coverage. For privately insured births, the father’s suboptimal physical health made it more likely that the mother, but not the child, became uninsured.

The Effects of Health on Health Insurance Status in Fragile Families

We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study to estimate the effects of poor infant health, pre-pregnancy health conditions of the mother, and the father's health status on health insurance status of urban, mostly unmarried, mothers and their one-year-old children. Virtually all births were covered by health insurance, but one year later about one third of mothers and over 10 percent of children were uninsured. We separately examine births that were covered by public insurance and those that were covered by private insurance. The child's health status had no effect, for the most part, on whether the mother or child became uninsured. For publicly insured births, a maternal physical health condition made it less likely that both the mother and child became uninsured, while maternal mental illness made it more likely that both the mother and child lost insurance coverage. For privately insured births, the father's suboptimal physical health made it more likely that the mother, but not the child, became uninsured.

Focus accent, word length and position as cues to L1 and L2 word recognition

The present study examines native and nonnative perceptual processing of semantic information conveyed by prosodic prominence. Five groups of German learners of English each listened to one of 5 experimental conditions. Three conditions differed in place of focus accent in the sentence and two conditions were with spliced stimuli. The experiment condition was presented first in the learners’ L1 (German) and then in a similar set in the L2 (English). The effect of the accent condition and of the length and position of the target in the sentence was evaluated in a probe recognition task. In both the L1 and L2 tasks there was no significant effect in any of the five focus conditions. Target position and target word length had an effect in the L1 task. Word length did not affect accuracy rates in the L2 task. For probe recognition in the L2, word length and the position of the target interacted with the focus condition

Access NOx and NOy measurements on‐line

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/94653/1/eost10885.pd

Organisational capacity for responsive regulation

In April 1998, the Australian Taxation Office (Tax Office) adopted a policy of responsive regulation of tax compliance by small firms in the building and construction industry. Known as the Australian Taxation Office Compliance Model (ATO Compliance Model), the new approach is grounded in past research into regulation of business entities. As seen by its promoters, it promises to improve significantly tax compliance in the cash economy. Drawing from survey and interview data, we explore the Tax Office’s capacity for successful implementation of the ATO Compliance Model. Specifically, we examine the extent to which it had the leadership and staff commitment to implement the policy successfully. We also explore whether or not project field-level staff saw merit in the program and eventually came to support it. We conclude by examining whether the owners of small building and construction firms changed their perspectives on the Tax Office and tax compliance following introduction of the ATO Compliance Model

Teacher education for diversity

This research reports the findings from three Queensland universities regarding preservice teachers' attitudes towards people with disabilities. The Interactions With Disabled Persons Scale (Gething, 1991) was administered to investigate the effect of personal attributes on preservice teachers' acceptance of and social interactions with people with disabilities. The findings indicate that only four percent of preservice teachers surveyed had undertaken any compulsory courses and only 18 percent had taken elective units in teaching children with special needs. Preservice teachers who had at least weekly contact with people with disabilities perceived less discomfort with such interactions than did those who had less contact. Additionally, postgraduate students experienced greater discomfort than undergraduates did. The implications of these findings for the development of compulsory preservice courses that focus on diversity and for subsequent changes in content at the participating universities are discussed