Damilola Eluyela

Tax compliance is a major contemporary debate surrounding corporate taxation in the business world. The tax avoidance issue, which remains an ethical problem for companies, has been a general concern in developed and developing countries alike. The main problem of this study is a non-tax compliance behavior of the corporate organization taxpayers in Nigeria. This study examined the influence of tax fairness on the tax compliance behavior of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria. The paper adopted a survey research method, and four hundred (400) copies of the questionnaire were administered to the selected manufacturing companies of both consumer and industrial goods sectors. The Laffer Curve Theory underpinned this study and Correlation Analysis, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), and Multiple Regression Analysis were also employed. The study found that there is a significant level of tax compliance among the listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria. The study also shows that the corporate taxpayer’s perception of fairness of –2.765 (0.006) has a significant impact on corporate taxpayers’ willingness to pay taxes and tax knowledge of 4.601 (0.000) significantly influenced tax compliance. Based on tax knowledge, the study recommends that tax authorities must improve the knowledge of taxpayers and tax collection agents through programs, initiatives, and training on tax awareness.

This study explored the influence of the governance cost on financial service efficiency in Nigeria. The recurrent collapse of reputable companies and banks due to agency problems have motivated this investigation. The study empirically sampled 40 financial service firms from the 50 firms registered on the stock market. The study adopted an ex-post-facto research design. Data was collected using secondary sources from the firms’ annual reports to determine the influence the governance cost has on Nigeria’s financial service efficiency for nine years (2012–2020). Also, the study utilized the Panel Tobit regression to test the hypothesis. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to ascertain the aggregate governance cost, and the proxies were directors’ fees, auditors’ fees, CEO compensation, and chairman fee. At the same time, financial service analysis was derived using the Input-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique under the constant return to scale (CRS) assumption. Consequently, findings from the study show a significant and positive influence of governance costs on the efficiency of financial services. The study, therefore, concludes that the current governance cost of the sampled firms drives efficiency within the sampled firms, and increasing the governance cost, based on the reviews on corporate governance structures, will not harm the efficiency of financial services. However, the consistent increase over time will harm efficiency. Thus, the study recommends an internal balance on the pay structure within the financial services.

Acknowledgment
The authors acknowledge Covenant University for solely providing the platform for this research and for fully sponsoring the publication of this research work.

This paper aimed to empirically examine the extent to which capital structure impacts the profitability of Nigerian Deposit Money Banks considering the profitability of eight Nigerian Deposit Money Banks from 2003 to 2018 (16 years). A descriptive research design was adopted for this study, and data were analyzed using regression. The study used secondary data obtained from published annual reports of selected Nigerian Deposit Money Banks on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) for four years (2003–2018). The study concluded that the indicators used to measure capital structure (debt-equity ratio and leverage ratio) and profitability (returns on equity) had a negative relationship. This means that the use of debts mixed with equity (debt-equity ratio and leverage ratio) in improper proportion as financing methods can negatively affect profitability. Hence, there is a need to identify the optimal mix of capital structure (debts mixed with equity) that maximizes profitability, as well as firm and shareholder value with minimum agency costs as suggested by the trade-off theory and agency theory, respectively. The alternative is to give preference to retained earnings (internal source of finance) as funding source.

Acknowledgment
All researchers and non-researchers that contributed to this paper are highly appreciated.