Tax morale and its effect on taxpayers' compliance to the tax policies of the Nigerian government was investigated. The aim of this research is to bring to bare the reason for low tax compliance in Nigeria. Primary data via structured questionnaire was used. The data were regressed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS16). The result showed that social norms, attitude towards government, tax evasion and tax avoidance have significant effect on tax morale. On the other hand, there

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... s no significant effect of attitude towards legal system and traditional institutions on tax morale. We also established a significant positive effect of tax morale on tax compliance. The researcher therefore recommended that, tax payers should be educated to know their obligation as far as tax is concerned. The younger generation should also be educated on the need to pay tax correctly if the future of tax obedience is anything to go by. The Monarchs should also help in ensuring that their subjects obey the law of the land viz a viz tax compliance. Finally, tax payer's monies should be used for the right purpose. Nigeria is governed by a Federal system and the government's fiscal power is based on a three-tier tax structure divided among the Federal, State, and Local governments, each of which has different tax jurisdictions. The Nigerian tax system is lopsided. The federal government controls all the major sources of revenue like import and excise duties, mining rents and royalties, petroleum profit tax and company income tax, value added tax among other revenue sources. State and local government taxes are minimal, hence, this limits their ability to raise independent revenue and so they depend solely on allocation from Federation Account. The role of taxation in economic development is controversial. Plausibly, the concept of taxation has been a concern of global significance as it affects every economy irrespective of national differences Oboh et al (2012). Within the context of Africa, tax, a concept as old as mankind can be described as an amount, effort, contribution or service rendered either in kind (i.e. goat, cow, farm produce, clearing of grass etc.) or monetary value (i.e. cash) contributed into a common purse for the running of the society. According to Omotoso (2001), in his definition of the modern taxes, defined tax as a compulsory charge imposed by a public authority on the income of individuals and companies as stipulated by the government decrees, acts or cases laws irrespective of the exact amount of services rendered to the payer in return. Thus, taxes constitute the principal source of government revenue and the beauty of any government is for its citizen to voluntarily execute their tax obligations without much coercion and harassment.