Taxpayer compliance is a critical part of any tax system, as without it, the integrity of the tax system can be undermined. Previously, Jackson and Milliron published a comprehensive study reviewing and synthesising the findings of tax compliance studies conducted prior to 1986; highlighting the variables, methodologies and theories. Richardson and Sawyer built upon this research by synthesising the work from 1986 to 1997. In a similar vein, this current research seeks to build upon these two important studies and extend our knowledge by analysing tax compliance studies in terms of ‘variables’ identified from January 1998 to December 2017. This analysis was facilitated by using text mining software, Leximancer, to visualise the frequency and co-occurrence of concepts and themes related to tax compliance factors. Data was drawn from 713 articles obtained from 15 research databases. Given the size of the data, this article is the first of a series of articles, focussing on the ‘variables’ that have been researched over the 20 year period. Future articles will examine the ‘methodologies’ and ‘theories’ used in the literature over this 20 year period.

Taxpayer compliance is a critical part of any tax system, as without it, the integrity of the tax system can be undermined. Previously, Jackson and Milliron published a comprehensive study reviewing and synthesising the findings of tax compliance studies conducted prior to 1986; highlighting the variables, methodologies and theories. Richardson and Sawyer built upon this research by synthesising the work from 1986 to 1997. Similarly this current research seeks to build upon these two important studies and extend our knowledge by analysing tax compliance studies in terms of ‘variables’ identified from January 1998 to December 2017. This analysis was facilitated by using text mining software, Leximancer, to visualise the frequency and co-occurrence of concepts and themes related to tax compliance factors. Data was drawn from 713 articles obtained from 15 research databases. Given the size of the data, this article is the first of a series of articles, focusing on the ‘variables’ that have been researched over the 20 year period. Future articles will examine the methodologies and theories used in the literature over this 20 year period.