Research Projects and Surveys

The Compliance Model: Champions and Challengers Within the ATO

The Compliance Model is consistent with the new management initiatives introduced into the Australian Public Service in the 1990s.

The purpose of the reforms was to gain efficiencies through giving staff more responsibility in decision making and providing values or principles to guide the decisions. The Compliance Model assumed that staff would be able to make decisions about whether or not a taxpayer was behaving cooperatively or not, to escalate action where necessary, and to follow through a case until the outcome of compliance had been achieved.

Many of these ideas were difficult to integrate into an organization that was highly segmented in terms of the tasks that needed to be performed. The provisions for follow-through of cases were limited, and the organisation clung to its historical attachment to having rules and technical handbooks for decision making.

To better understand the problems facing the ATO in implementing the Compliance Model, interviews were conducted with people in the organisation who had stood up to be counted as either Compliance Model Champions or Compliance Model Challengers.

Chief Investigators

Ms Jenny Job
Dr Kersty Hobson
Professor Valerie Braithwaite
Dr Tina Murphy
Dr Brenda Morrison
Dr Declan Roche

Data Set

A series of interviews was conducted with ATO staff in the period December 1998 to July 1999.

Key Publications

Job, J. & Honaker, D.
Short-term experience with responsive regulation in the Australian Taxation Office. In V. Braithwaite (ed) Taxing Democracy: Understanding Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003.
(pdf version)

Job, J., Stout, A. & Smith, R.
Culture change in three taxation administrations: From command-and-control to responsive regulation, Special issue on Responsive Regulation and Taxation, Law and Policy 29(1) 2007: 84-101.
(pdf version)

Hobson, K.
Championing the Compliance Model: From common sense to common action? In V. Braithwaite (ed) Taxing Democracy: Understanding Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003.
(pdf version)

Top of page

ANU | RegNet | Home | About us | People | Publications

© Centre for Tax System Integrity
Web design by Starkis Design
Page last updated 18 October