As an important issue in the fiscal structure of a country, tax gap is defined as the difference between tax burden that the taxpayer should face and the amount actually paid. In this study, tax gap was evaluated by the framework of the Value Added Tax. The reason behind this choice, i.e. Value Added Tax Gap (VAT Gap) is to make an effort to evaluate the efficiency of the tax administration, the compliance of the taxpayers and the relationship between policy gap and the compliance gap. With this aim, VAT Gap and the various methods to calculate this gap were examined. Furthermore, based on the reports by the European Commission, VAT Gap in Turkey for 1993-2014 period were estimated and evaluated by employing the top-down method.

This paper analyzes the effect of leverage financing on corporate performance using debt-equity, coverage ratios and earnings per share as proxies. The study is motivated by need to assess the extent to which leverage affects optimizes financing risk as well as maximize returns to shareholders in the Nigerian banking industry. The study made use of F-ratios, Durbin-Watson, Akaikeand Schwarz Information Criteria as well as to log likelihood parameters in arriving at conclusions. Though the results across banks studied shows mixed outcome, leverage financing was established as critical strategy for maximization of shareholders returns. The conclusion therefore is that in order to ensure that leverage financing leads to desired outcome business organisations must established their optimum level as well as strike a strategic balance with associated financing risk and returns to owners of the firm.

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The study examined the effect of capital structure decisions on profitability of quoted consumer good firms in Nigeria. Research method adopted is ex-post facto research design. The study employed secondary data obtained from the websites of the consumer goods sub-sectors of the manufacturing sector, published annual reports and statements of accounts of the sampled firms and the Nigerian Stock Exchange F-act-book. The study adopted judgmental sampling and multi-stage sampling techniques in data collection. Multiple Regression models were used in the analysis of the data. The estimation result also showed that the retained earnings to asset ratio (REA) had a direct relationship with return on asset of quoted consumer goods firms in Nigeria. The study concludes that, retained earnings to asset ratio positively influenced return on asset of quoted consumer goods firms in Nigeria at 5% level of significance. The study recommends firms' managers and financial advisors to advise the stakeholders of quoted consumer goods firms to use more of internal fund to finance a huge proportion of their assets if available. Again, the firms' managers are advised to continuously study the market and advice firms on the appropriateness of the proportions of long-term debt to be used during capital structure decisions to avoid the adverse effect of financial distress. Contribution/Originality:This study originated a model in the research methodology to explain the effect of retained earnings on asset ratio to return on asset of Quoted Consumer Goods firms in Nigeria. This study contributes to existing knowledge by identifying gap in the literature and creating areas for future research.