Taxpayers' compliance level of a country reflects its citizens' knowledge about taxation system and, their connection and trust towards the government. However, low compliance level of individuals' and companies has raised the question of the adequacy and effectiveness of citizen tax knowledge in Malaysia and whether tax education is warranted. This study is an overview on the Malaysian public's perception towards introducing formal tax education in secondary schools. First, it looks at current taxpayer's tax learning experience and their opinion on whether a formal approach in teaching taxation should be introduced. Second, this study also evaluates their opinion, on hindsight, if early tax education would have benefited them when they became liable to tax. Third, the public's perception on the importance of taxation as compared to other related financial literacy knowledge is also evaluated. Findings shows that more than 90% of respondents agreed that early and formal tax education will provide them and future taxpayers with better understanding of the taxation system and their responsibility towards taxes. It is recommended that the Ministry of Education, the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (IRBM) and other related tax agencies should work together towards formally establishing tax education curriculum in secondary school in order to enhance future taxpayers' consciousness towards taxes.

It has been argued that tax education in the 21 st century faces significant challenges on how to educate accounting graduates [future accountants] in a complex and rapidly changing environment. Prior studies found that the advancement of Information and Communications Technologies [ICT] has an impact on accounting and tax practice. This study solicited tax practitioners' views on the level of conceptual knowledge and technical ability accounting graduates need to acquire in order to perform effectively in tax practice. Questionnaires was developed and electronically administered to collect data. The results revealed that most of the respondents put more emphasis on the need to have conceptual knowledge than technical ability.The respondents indicated that accounting graduates should have a strong understanding of basic principles and concepts of Malaysian taxation in order to develop their technical ability. Collectively, the findings suggested that tax educators are urged to revamp tax curriculum to expose graduates to various tax software, and to put more emphasis and imparting conceptual knowledge than technical/computational skills.

Purpose -This study aims to examine the ICT skills needed by a fresh accounting graduate when first joining a tax firm; to find out usage of electronic tax (e-tax) applications in tax practice; to assess the rating of senior tax practitioners on fresh graduates' ICT and e-tax applications skills; and to solicit tax practitioners' opinion regarding integrating ICT skills and tax software into a tax course. Design/methodology/approach -An online survey method was used to collect the data. An online survey was distributed to 385 tax practitioners who worked in the accounting/tax firms that participated in the university's internship programs. A total of 112 usable questionnaires were analyzed. Findings -The survey found that the three most important ICT skills with which fresh graduates should be familiar before graduating were spreadsheet software, word-processing software, and e-mail. The result shows that the usage of e-tax applications is still not pervasive in tax practice. Overall, senior tax practitioners rated fresh accounting graduates' ICT skills as "average". Both senior (75 percent) and junior (73.7 percent) tax practitioners agreed that ICT skills and tax software should be integrated in the tax course offered by the universities.Practical implications -This study has provided insights to policy makers and tax educators to revamp the existing tax curriculum, and to introduce learning tax software in classes, and to place more emphasis in imparting ICT skills in tax education. Originality/value -Scholarly study on tax education and ICT is scant. Little is known about whether the existing tax education is adequate in meeting the needs of the employers in the job market. This paper has emerged to fill a knowledge gap.

Public sector organizations play an essential role in supporting the government's commitment to sustainable development. These organizations are expected to disclose more social and environmental information than private companies due to public contracts. Malaysian State Islamic Religious Councils (SIRCs) is one of the government agencies responsible for distributing and disseminating adequate and accurate information to various stakeholders, especially the public. These SIRCs frequently organize sustainability-related activities as part of their corporate social responsibility agenda and have a vast potential to contribute by disseminating sustainability-related information on their websites. However, the extent of sustainability website reporting by the SIRCs remained largely unaddressed. Drawing from the literature, this preliminary study proposes a website disclosure index for sustainability reporting by the SIRCs in Malaysia. A content analysis on three SIRCs websites representing three regions in Malaysia have been performed. A total of sixty-seven disclosure items were used as indicators during the website content analysis. Key findings indicate that more effort needs to be initiated by SIRCs in supporting a unified digital reporting that promotes accountability and transparency among government agencies. Nevertheless, the proposed website disclosure index may assist in formulating policies to encourage the use of SIRCs' websites to report sustainability information to the public. This study provides valuable input in supporting the government's aspiration to develop future strategies for achieving Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) and adds to the limited literature on the website sustainability reporting by the public sector. Future research may use a larger sample of SIRCs to validate the disclosure index proposed in this study.