Over the past decades, research on individual tax compliance has moved its focus from the influence of deterrence to the influence of social influence mechanism such as conformity and compliance. Fundamentally, this research revolves around the idea that the behaviour and attitudes of an individual or a group may be affected by the behaviour of others or an individual's reference group. In line with this view, this paper discusses the influence of social mechanisms on individual taxpayers' decision making. It argues that acknowledging the influence of social network can assist in explaining tax compliance among individual taxpayers in Malaysia. This argument runs counter the standard theoretical framework of tax compliance (involving deterrence factors such as fines, penalties, and audit probabilities, and that, in turn, this nature leads them to be non-compliant by manipulating their tax returns.