The study investigated the impacts of tax payers' knowledge and penalties on tax compliance amongst small and medium enterprises in Nigeria using a survey research design. The data obtained from questionnaire were analyzed using the Ordinary Least Square regression method. The results showed that tax knowledge had a positive significant impact on tax compliance while tax penalty had insignificant positive impact on tax compliance. Thus, the study shows that tax knowledge has a higher tendency to promote tax compliance than tax penalty. Government should therefore do everything possible to increase public knowledge on tax matters and tax education should be included in school curricula at all times. Small and medium scale business owners should also seek to advance their tax knowledge and awareness for the mutual benefits of the governments and taxpayers.

This study examines the relationship between dividend payout ratio and working capital management and the effect of firm's working capital management practice on its dividend payout ratio. The working capital management is measured by the net trade cycle, current ratio and debt ratio. The data used in this study were obtained from twelve manufacturing companies quoted on the Nigeria Stock Exchange between 2002 and 2006. The data wer analysed using the Pearson product moment correlation technique and ordinary least square (OLS) regression technique. The results show that dividend payout ratio was influenced positively by profitability and net trade cycle but negatively by growth rate in earnings. Corporate profitability, working management, and growth in earnings have statistically insignificant effects on the dividend payout ratio at 5% confidence level. Hence, we can conclude that from this study working capital management is not significant in dividend policy decision. However, the result cannot be generalized owing to the problem of small sample size, seemingly poor model specification and failure to adopt the robust modern statistical technique provided by the fixed and random effects of panel data regression technique.

This research focuses on who controls shareholder’s wealth maximization and how does this affect firm’s performance in publicly quoted non-financial companies in Nigeria. The shareholder fund was the dependent while explanatory variables were firm size (proxied by log of turnover), retained earning (representing management control) and dividend payment (representing measure of shareholders control). The data used for this study were obtained from the Nigerian Stock Exchange [NSE] fact book and the annual reports of the six sampled companies from Food/ Beverages and tobacco sub-sector for twenty years (1986-2005) to constitute pooled data of 120 observations. Using auto-regression technique for correcting serial auto-correlation in time series data, the results converge at ten iterations. Results showed that all the independent variables provide good explanation for the model. It was observed that firm size (log of turnover) and retained earnings had positive relationships and statistically significant impacts on the shareholders fund while dividend payment had negative relationship. The results show that turnover and retained earnings are of more significance in the control of shareholders wealth than the dividend payment. Thus, we can conclude that the management of the organizations under the present study is in major control of shareholders wealth maximization objective and impact on the firm performance. Implication is that selecting high quality management for the organizations would help in achieving shareholders wealth maximization objective in organizations.

This study assesses the level of tax education, particularly the level of understanding of VAT law amongst three categories of taxpayers in Nigeria. The data for the study were collected by means of structured questionnaires administered to the respondents. The analysis of results showed that most of the respondents have poor knowledge of VAT law in Nigeria, irrespective of their level of literacy, and that there was no significant difference in the amount of knowledge of VAT law amongst the three groups of respondents used for the study. A suggestion was made of an aggressive and widespread public education on VAT matters that could involve an integration of tax education into the curricula of education in our institutions of higher learning and general public enlightenment through media, and organized workshops for specific groups.