<![CDATA[Tax compliance remains a persistent challenge in developing economies, particularly in regional contexts characterized by economic diversity and varying institutional capacity. While existing literature extensively examines direct determinants of compliance, the moderating role of tax awareness defined as internalized civic-moral obligation, distinct from the technical-cognitive construct of taxpayer knowledge remains underexplored. Tax awareness is modeled as a moderator rather than an additional antecedent because prior Indonesian studies have predominantly positioned awareness-related constructs as mediators, leaving unexamined whether awareness conditions the strength of predictor-compliance relationships within the Theory of Planned Behavior framework. This study analyzes data from 240 individual taxpayers registered at KPP Pratama Singaraja, Buleleng Regency, Bali, Indonesia, collected through purposive sampling and analyzed using PLS-SEM with SmartPLS 3 and bootstrapping with 5,000 subsamples. Results indicate that tax administration system is the strongest predictor of compliance (β = 0.268, p < 0.001), followed by tax service quality (β = 0.147, p = 0.016), while taxpayer knowledge shows no significant direct effect (β = -0.047, p = 0.271). Tax awareness exhibits divergent moderation patterns: negatively moderating the service quality-compliance relationship (β = -0.325, p < 0.001), consistent with a substitution interpretation, while positively moderating the administration system-compliance relationship (β = 0.147, p = 0.002), consistent with a synergy interpretation. These findings suggest that subjective norms interact with, rather than simply add to, attitude- and control-based compliance determinants. Discriminant validity limitations and the single-site cross-sectional design constrain generalizability beyond similar regional tax office contexts.]]>
