THE ROLE OF TAX AGENTS IN TAXPAYERS’ TAX COMPLIANCE

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the role of tax agents in tax compliance. The works that analyze this phenomenon can be divided into two major groups. Firstly, those that examine the role of tax agents, from the perspective of taxpayers, which indicate that their perception of tax complexity is the great motive to use tax agents’ service. Secondly, studies which analyze the tax agents' attitude. A first subgroup analyzes the impact of professionals' tax knowledge in tax compliance; some authors argue that increasing of tax knowledge implies the decreasing of noncompliance, other authors argue exactly the opposite. A second subgroup of studies finds that the attitude of the tax agents may be contradictory, in easier situations, they help in reducing tax noncompliance; in more ambiguous situations, they tend to use their tax knowledge to provide tax benefits to their customers, increasing evasion and tax planning.