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Abstract
This thesis explores the taxpayer compliance behaviour of blue-collar workers, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, in the 1990s. Statistics reveal that those taxpayers participated in the mass-marketed tax avoidance schemes of the period at significantly higher rates than any other group of Australian taxpayers. This thesis investigates the motivational factors which might have caused that phenomenon.
The study adopts a pragmatic research framework, and applies a mixed methods research approach to arrive at its findings.
To provide appropriate background and context, the thesis outlines an ethnography which considers the physical, economic and social environments of the Pilbara region. The ethnography highlights the extremely harsh physical and social environments in which the workers associated with the mining industry of the Pilbara region live and work. The thesis then examines the history of tax avoidance schemes in Australia from the early 1970s to the late 1990s to illustrate the development of the mass-marketed tax avoidance schemes. It also undertakes a review of the existing literature to identify factors considered to be relevant to an explanation of the disproportionate engagement of the Pilbara miners in tax avoidance activity.
The thesis reviews available statistics in order to reveal dominant motivational factors present in the taxpayer population of the Pilbara region in that period. That examination is then used to frame a series of semi-structured interviews with a group of blue-collar workers of the Pilbara region and other taxpayers to add qualitative flesh to the quantitative bones of the research.
This thesis concludes that the primary motivating factors may have been the combination of the physically harsh living environment and the heavy working conditions, further influenced by the high personal income tax rates experienced by the blue-collar workers in the Pilbara.
The thesis contributes to the literature in this area by studying a class of taxpayer previously unidentified as being actively engaged in tax avoidance activity, and by seeking to explain their behaviour. It also makes a number of suggestions for areas of further research, such as analyses of the impact of fly-in-fly-out work practices, and of occupational influences on tax compliance behaviour.