Value-added tax, financial performance, agribusinesses

This study aimed at investigating the impact of value-added tax on corporate financial performance of quoted companies. To achieve this purpose, we developed some hypotheses and critically reviewed existing theoretical and empirical literatures. Agribusinesses quoted in the Nigerian Stock Exchange Factbook of 2009 were considered as the population for this study. The population elements include the General Managers, Chief Accountants, Finance Managers, Chief Internal Auditors, External Auditors, and Tax Administrators of the selected companies. A total of forty (42) respondents were considered for this study. A well structured questionnaire designed in five-point Likert Scale was administered on the respondents to elicit their responses. The data generated for this study were presented in tabular form and analyzed using frequencies and simple percentages while the stated hypotheses were statistically tested with the simple regression analysis and the t-test. Our findings indicated that Value-Added Tax (VAT) impacted negatively on the financial performance of agribusinesses though the impact is of insignificant value. Based on our findings, we recommended that agribusinesses should endeavour to keep appropriate source documents of all transactions for efficient VAT operations and that the governments should ensure that proper tax incentive scheme is designed and fully implemented to promote the growth of agribusinesses, in Nigeria.