Accounting students’ perception of the tax burden in Brazil: a comparative study between freshmen and senior students

Abstract

The general purpose of this article was to make a comparative analysis of the perceptions of entering and graduating Accounting students in relation to the tax burden in Brazil. To achieve the purpose, a descriptive study was performed with a quantitative approach and a questionnaire was used, applied to the first three and last three periods of the Accounting course at a Federal University in Minas Gerais. This questionnaire was designed with three blocks, the first designed to collect data on the sample profile, and the last two consisting of questions about the tax burden. In data analysis, we used the Student's t test to verify the presence or absence of statistics significance between the different responses of the groups. The results suggest that there were few significant differences between the perceptions of beginner sand seniors graduating students in relation to the tax burden in Brazil and, therefore, the condition of senior has not given the students more knowledge in relation to beginners. Furthermore, it was found that the graduating students are more pessimistic about the tax system than the beginners.