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Research Title: The potential impact of participatory budgeting on tax compliance in Australia.

Supervisor/s Name: Chris Evans, Rodney Brown

About

Tomo is a PhD candidate at the School of Accounting, Auditing and Taxation.

Tomo's PhD thesis delves into the potential impact of implementing a form of participatory budgeting (PB) on individual taxpayers' tax compliance in Australia. Participatory budgeting broadly involves ‘empowering citizens to participate in the decision-making and budgetary process’. While the concept has garnered global attention, its impact on tax compliance has not received adequate attention, particularly within the Australian context.

Existing research suggests that governmental bodies adopting participatory governance models tend to exhibit higher tax collection rates compared to those that do not. Moreover, the research shows that involving individuals to vote on how their taxes are spent can significantly increase tax compliance. Despite this, the intersection of participatory budgeting and tax compliance lacks significant examination. In this respect, Tomo's thesis aims to fill a gap in the literature by investigating the relationship between participatory budgeting and voluntary tax compliance.

The study employs a mixed-methods approach, drawing from global experiences with participatory budgeting, to distil its key elements and identify those elements that can potentially improve tax compliance. Ultimately, Tomo's research is to explore how tax revenue can be raised in a democratic and innovative way by positively influencing individual taxpayers’ willingness-to-pay taxes by promoting inclusive governance and civic participation, complemented by the efficient allocation of public resources to meet the community needs.