Abstract
The study investigated the influence of the quality of democracy on tax compliance in Nigeria. Itsspecific objectives were to examine the influence of democracy indicators (quality of an electoral process, quality of accountability, government effectiveness, quality of political culture, quality of civil liberties, quality of a legal system, and control of corruption) on tax compliance in Nigeria.
The study adopted a time-series analysis research design. It utilized time series (secondary) data covering the period of 1999 to 2020 on the variables of interest sourced from the Economist Intelligence, the World Bank database among others. The Ordinary Least Square (OLS) technique was adopted to test the data on the variable of interests.
The study discovered that the quality of the electoral process, and accountability in a democratic system of government significantly influence tax compliance in Nigeria. However, the effectiveness of the democratic system in policy formulation, quality of political culture, quality of civil liberties, control of corruptionand quality of the legal system in the democratic system of government have no significant influence on tax compliance in Nigeria. It is on these findings, the study recommends among others that the proposed amendments to the Electoral Act in the National Assembly is passed into law before the next general election and that the three arms of government should ensure that the electoral process in Nigeria is strengthened in order to ensure a free and fair election that will ensure that the votes of the electoral count. It concluded that that the tax revenue to GDP ratio of Nigeria can be improved when the government of Nigerian fully implement the concept of democracy and upgrade from hybrid democratic regimes to full democracy in practice.
