Perceptions of Individual Taxpayers towards Tax Avoidance: A Case Study of Cuttack District of Odisha

The primary and major source of revenue of any government is collection from the tax. The amount of tax revenue is expensed for the welfare of the public. Various provisions are laid down in the Income Tax Act, of 1961 for the levy and collection of tax. The taxpayers have to take the benefits of loopholes of the provisions for the reduction of tax burden and it is called Tax Avoidance which is a legal action. Ultimately, tax avoidance reduces the sources of revenue of the government. This paper attempts to study the perception of the individual taxpayers towards Tax Avoidance in Odisha. This study is based on both the primary and secondary sources of data. The primary data has been collected and compiled from the responses of 100 numbers of individual taxpayers. The secondary data have been collected and compiled from the various ancillary sources such as magazines, periodicals, journals, and some apparent websites. The data collected from these sources have been categorized and tabularized as per the necessities of the current study. There are various statistical and mathematical tools and techniques like the Chi-square test, percentage, trend Analysis, and Likert scale have been applied for the exploration and understanding of results. The present paper shows that a huge number of taxpayers or people are considering payment of taxes as a load in spite of the amount of tax is very less. The average perception of individual taxpayers differs significantly among different groups of the selected demographic and financial variables. The perception of individual taxpayers toward Tax Avoidance shows the adverse impact on the economic development of the country.