The practice of taxation also has a long history of compliance and intentional and unintentional noncompliance by taxpayers.

Noncompliance represents the failure to meet ones tax obligations and it can be describes with such terms as tax cheating, evasion, errors and misreporting. TAXES, TAXATION AND TAX COMPLIANCE Blacks Law Dictionary defined tax as the enforced proportional contributions from persons and property, levied by the State by virtue of its sovereignty for the support of Government and for all public needs. From the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, tax is defined as money that has to be paid to the government so that it can pay for public services. Tax levied on taxable personal income can take any of the following forms: progressive tax, proportional tax and regressive tax. Thomas Cooley cited in the ICAN study pack on Taxation defined taxes as enforced proportional contributions from persons and property, levied by the state, by virtue of its sovereignty, for the support of government and for all public needs. Taxes may also be defined as a "pecuniary burden laid upon individuals or property to support government expenditure. Taxes may be direct or indirect and may be imposed on individual basis, on entities, on assets and on transactional basis. Taxes are ideally used as a means of supporting the

infrastructure of our country, both social and physical which include government security and the protection of rights. The definition and concept of taxation have been captured in the introductory section of this chapter. In Nigeria tax system, tax payers obligation were enumerated, meeting these obligations constitute compliance. In the words of Bube and Oyedele, (1996) it is failure to meet all the demands of tax policy that constitutes noncompliance. Below are obligations of the taxpayer; that is he must subscribe to: All revenue authorities are generally required to achieve as good a compliance outcome as possible (i.e., to maximise the overall level of compliance with the tax laws). Concern about voluntary tax compliance has led to numerous studies on tax compliance issues, particularly regarding income tax.

Comprehensive reviews of prior major tax compliance studies are provided by Jackson and Milliron, 1986 and Richardson and Sawyer (2001).

Managerial benefits are predicated on stringent record keeping that is derivable from improvements to the accounting information system (AIS); improvements to controls; and savings. The literatures on tax compliance notes that one indirect benefit of tax compliance is the discipline imposed on small businesses to prepare and

maintain accurate financial accounts (e.g., income statement, balance sheet). Sandford (1995) noted some indirect benefits such as improvements in information systems and financial control.