Citizens' attitudes towards tax evasion: demographic profile, perception of fairness and relative seriousness / Nur Quratun 'Aini Haron

This is an exploratory study conducted in Malaysia whereby it focuses on the citizens' attitudes toward tax evasion and to determine whether demographic profile and perception of fairness affect the attitudes of the Malaysian citizens on tax evasion. In addition, this study examined whether citizens in Malaysia view tax evasion as an acceptable activity and examined the relative seriousness of tax evasion as compared to other offences. The sample size of this study is 173 comprising of salary earning and retirees located throughout the Southern and Central regions. This study found that only age and nature of employment have a significant difference on the attitudes towards tax evasion. Respondents' gender, level of income and level of education seemed to bear no significant difference to their attitudes towards tax evasion. Apart from that, perception of fairness is also found to have no significant relationship with the citizens' attitudes towards tax evasion. Surprisingly, this study found that citizens in Malaysia find it acceptable to evade on all sizes of income, be it "a small part", "a large part", or "all part" of their income. Tax evasion also was not considered as a serious offence as it has been ranked as the least severe as compared to suicide, abortion, homosexuality, prostitution, wife beating, divorce, accepting a bribe, avoiding fare on a public transport and claiming government benefits which you are not entitled to. This study may be useful and would be able to facilitate the tax authorities in evaluating and reviewing the current tax system. It is crucial so as to ensure that people will not take tax evasion lightly

ACKNOWLEDGING INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL IN MALAYSIAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES PERFORMANCE

  In today's knowledge-based economy, intellectual capital has emerged as a crucial component for boosting productivity and sustaining organizational performance. The intellectual capital approach has assumed a preeminent position in the higher education industry, where knowledge is the primary output and input. The majority of its valuable input consists of researchers, managers, and students who are acquainted with the university's procedures, rules, and regulations, as well as its network of relationships. Principal outputs include research results, publications, educated students, and productive stakeholder relationships. If universities are to continue providing high-quality services and ensure their long-term viability, these intellectual capital components must be properly identified and managed. Malaysian public universities were chosen as the sample for this investigation into how universities extract the value of their intangible assets. This study seeks to provide empirical evidence on the relationship between the intellectual capital of universities and their performance. IBM-SPSS analysis software was applied to the dataset of 56 respondents. The analysis demonstrates that intellectual capital significantly influences universities’ performance, especially on financial, internal process and learning growth performance perspectives. This study provides a deeper understanding of how universities measure their intellectual capital and the significance of its value in enhancing the performance of public universities. The indicators discovered in measuring intellectual capital are anticipated to become a model applicable to ASEAN public universities for managing and reporting intellectual capital and its significant influence on a university’s performance.   Keywords: Intellectual Capital; Public Universities; University Performance; Measuremen

Accounting Students’ Motivation for Getting Professionally Qualified

To move Malaysia to a developing nation, 60,000 professionally qualified accountants are needed by 2030. However, as of April 2017, only 33,000 accountants have registered as members of the Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA). The purpose of this research is to analyse students’ behaviour on the motivational factors to obtain professional accounting qualifications. This study gathered the response of 187 students as samples from the only public university in Malaysia that offers ACCA professional accounting certificate. The results show that most students are motivated by intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, while there is no relationship between third parties’ influence and demographic factors with the decision to pursue a professional accounting qualification. Keywords: Professional qualified; intrinsic motivation; extrinsic motivation; accounting students eISSN: 2398-4287© 2020. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v5i15.245