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Religion could drive development. Although Ghana is touted as the most religious country in the world, notably, some Charismatic/Pentecostal churches operate at the expense of community development and members’ welfare. This study sought to achieve three objectives: to determine whether there is an opportunity for organizing the various churches for interfaith cooperative collective action; to assess the association between people’s religiosity and the propensity to join interfaith cooperative collective action and to assess people’s perceptions of the institutional framework that could facilitate the organization of the religious community in Ghana for interfaith collective action.

Descriptive statistics and an ordered probit model (OPM) were used to analyze cross-sectional data from a representative sample of households in the Greater Accra Region. Thematic analysis was also used to analyze the qualitative data.

The study found that generally, there is a positive response to a proposal to mobilize churches in an interfaith cooperative collective action, but distrust poses a great threat to interfaith cooperative collective action. The study also found that affiliation with the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and Pentecostal/Charismatic is negatively (positively) associated with the propensity to join a collective action, respectively. Finally, the results of the study found that accountability, proper management and fair distribution of the proceeds from a collective action will help in mobilizing churches in Ghana in an interfaith collective action.

This is the first major study to explore the possibility of interfaith collective action among religious denominations aimed at accelerating poverty reduction and wealth creation in any developing country.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-08-2023-0670

Improving tax compliance would drive the needed development in Ghana. Small and medium scale enterprises (SME) constitute a sizable proportion of the Ghanaian economy but its contribution to tax revenue is below expectation. This study aims to determine whether SME's perception of state legitimacy affects tax compliance.

A structured questionnaire was administered to 200 SMEs randomly drawn from Dodowa in the Shai-Osudoku District of Greater Accra Region. Descriptive statistics and the Probit model with sample selection were used to analyse the data.

The study found that SME's perception of government legitimacy exerts a significant negative effect on reducing profit to avoid tax liability (ß = −0.0305, p < 0.05). Other factors such as education and fear of fines and penalties were also found to reduce the likelihood that the firm would reduce profit to avoid high tax liability. Still, tax knowledge had a positive effect on this behaviour.

This study would help deepen policymakers' knowledge of how to improve tax compliance among SMEs in Ghana.

The originality of this work is that it explicitly models the role of fiscal exchange theory in explaining tax compliance among SMEs in Ghana by using robust methodology.