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' 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.