AUDIT COMMITTEE ATTRIBUTES AND TAX AVOIDANCE

ABSTRACT

Audit committee is an integral structure in an organization, it’s a structure posed with the responsibility of appointment of external auditor and most especially ensuring quality financial statement. This study tends to focus on audit committee on tax avoidance and how the later effectively impact on tax proceed to be received by government, and also the type of organized structure which impact can really have a positive effect in preventing tax avoidance among the corporate entities. The study look into three structural approach that can really impact on audit committee which are; Independent of audit committee, Financial Literacy of audit committee and size of audit committee. These approaches are taken as independent variables to compare against the revenue realized from Company income tax as stated in the FIRS Statistical Bulletin as dependent variables. This study uses the 22 listed companies under the services sectors as the sample of the population in Corporate institute in Nigeria taken into the statement of account from 2013 to 2022 as reported in the Nigeria Stock Exchange (NGX), and focused on ratio of tax paid during those periods. Correlational research design was used in measuring the data gathered from the 21 listed companies based on the result from descriptive and inferential statistical analysis tools, which shows that independent of audit committee (IDAC) has a p-value of 0.8675 which is greater than the conventional significance level of 0.05. Hence , it shows that independent of audit committee has no significant impact on tax avoidance. The test was also performed on financial Literacy (FLEAD) and size of audit committee (SAD), which indicate values of 0.3192 and 0.0001 which indicate these two variables has a significant impact on tax avoidance. The study reflect the strong evidence of SAD on tax avoidance (0.0001) which show the integral importance of brainstorming when there is considerable size of committee making decision on the affairs of the corporation. Keywords: Audit Committee , Tax Avoidance, Independent of Audit Committee, Financial Literacy of Audit Committee, Size of Audit committee and Services sectors.