Tax Practitioners: Advocates of Compliance or Avoidance?

Tax practitioners alongside taxpayers and tax authorities are the major actors in a tax compliance system. They assist the government to enforce tax law when it is unambiguous but exploit tax law to the detriment of compliance when the tax rules are ambiguous. Using a sample of 13 listed manufacturing firms over the period 2000 to 2013, we exploit the introduction of transfer pricing rule to investigate how tax laws and tax practitioners have influenced corporate tax compliance in Kenya. The introduction of transfer pricing rule reduced corporate tax avoidance; however, the reduction in tax avoidance was partly offset by the action of the tax practitioners. Audit firms capacity, as measured by size, seems to matter in helping clients in tax planning. To tame tax practitioners, tax advisory services should be licensed and regulated. Furthermore, mechanism to identify and seal any possible loopholes should be instituted in the legislation process.