PROPERTY TAX

In some advanced countries, property tax is seen as a major source of revenue, this is not the case in Nigeria. The main aim of this study was to examine the willingness of property owners to pay property tax in Benin City. Specific objectives were to ascertain the level of awareness of property tax by residents; determine the percentage of property owners that pay property tax; determine the correlation between respondents’ awareness of property tax and their compliance; and ascertain the significance of the relationship between public governance quality and property tax compliance. The hypothesis was also proposed namely: property tax payers’ compliance has no significant relationship with laws made by the government that is seen to provide citizens with basic amenities. A combination of stratified sampling technique and simple random sampling technique was used to administer questionnaires to 400 respondents in Benin City. Simple percentage, Likert’s scale analysis, Pearson Product Correlation technique, and chi-square test were deployed in data analyses and interpretation. The result showed that majority of the sampled respondents 56% were male while 44% were female while majority of the respondents 220 (55%) were also married. It was also found that majority of respondents (80%) were aware of the existence of property tax and just 55% of them had paid. The study also showed that there is a moderately positive relation between property tax compliance and property tax awareness, with a correlation coefficient of 0.58. At 95% level of confidence, it was established that there is significant relationship between government transparency and property tax compliance. Also that public governance quality in general promotes willingness to comply
with property tax by property owners. It was recommended that government must provide public services such as security, good roads that satisfy the expectations of the property owners; that the government should engage in enlightenment campaigns concerning what property tax is; and that the government should be transparent about how revenue acquired through property tax is spent as this would motivate and cause the property owners to be willing to pay property tax.