Identifying Factors Affecting VAT Auditing Risks (Case Study of Firms Accepted in Tehran Sock Exchange)

The value-added tax system in Iran has recently been focused due to its infancy, and consequently many aspects of its auditing quality, and strategies for achieving and improving the quality have not been explained. Also, it is important to asses VAT taxpayers risks in order to formulate an effective plan for selecting taxpayers for tax audit with the aim of increasing efficiency and effectiveness. So, this study has aimed at not only reviewing the necessity of audit risk in the VAT system, but also factors affecting an audit risks model to establish strong and effective audit plans that are able to timely identify cases of non-compliance and tax violations. In order to determine the statistical sample, the method of systematic elimination has been used and finally a sample of 80 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange for the period of 2016 and 2017 was examined. To test the research hypotheses, non-linear multiple regression analysis using logit method has been used. The results of this study show that among the effective factors on tax audit risk, taxpayer history and timely registration within the deadline set in the value added plan have a significant and inverse relationship with audit risk; Also, there is a significant and direct relationship between the size of taxpayer and tax refund, and requests with negative tax credit balance by taxpayers with audit risk, and also the results indicate that there is no significant relationship between taxpayer's top-level audit and taxpayer audit risk.