A study of taxpayers’ perception of adopting a personal tax e-filing system

Abstract

The importance of understanding and influencing taxpayers’ acceptance of electronic taxfiling system is critical, given the investment in technology and the potential for cost saving. Using the filing of personal tax as an example, this study explores and understands Malaysian taxpayers’ perceptions towards electronic tax-filing system and the impact on their behavioral intention to adopt. An extended version of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is used to examine the above perception with the new construct ‘perceived risk’ along with TAM two beliefs; perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. A survey was distributed with 166 responses have generally agreed that risk construct is also their concern while using electronic tax-filing. The results strongly support the extended TAM in predicting the behavioral intention of taxpayers’ to adopt electronic tax-filing system. The research model explains over half of the variance of the behavioral intention to adopt electronic tax-filing system [R2 = 0.61], the unexplained 39 percent of variance suggests that the model may have excluded other possible factors influencing the adoption of electronic tax-filing system. Although this is a small scale study and not comprehensive but it able to provide a preliminary study on taxpayers perception on electronic tax-filing system. Therefore, the findings suggest that LHDNM should consider these contextual factors in order to facilitate taxpayers’ adoption behavior. Finally, based on the findings of this survey, limitations for electronic tax-filing system that could be addressed in future studies are discussed too.