A Research Dissertation Submitted to Mzumbe University, in partial fulfillment of
the Requirements for the Award of the Master Degree of Science in Accounting
and Finance (MSc-A&F).
It is widely recognized that Taxpayer Education Program is a very important aspect in
any Revenue Authority that calls for success in its daily undertakings. But most of the
Revenue Collection Center has been poorly performing and amongst the reasons
provided for this is the ineffective Taxpayers Education Program arrangement which
lead them not to reach the target. In order to combat the situation, Tanzania Revenue
Authority decided to introduce Taxpayer Education Program Centers for providing
Education to Taxpayers in order to promote voluntary tax compliance among small
and medium enterprises. Ilala Municipal is one of these Taxpayer Education Program
Center.
The main objective of this study was to examine the effect of taxpayer’s education on
voluntary tax compliance among the SMEs in Ilala Municipal. The result shows that;
On the attitudes and attitudinal factors, it was found that most taxpayers view the
Tanzania tax system as unfair. This was because most respondents differed that they
are paying a fair share of tax; that their neighbors, friends etc are reporting and paying
tax honestly; that tax laws are easy to understand i.e. calculation of tax filing and
paying dates; that they make high business profit by operating illegal business,
underreporting of profits etc; that taxpayers are given rewards, and that there is use of
informants by TRA to report tax evaders.
This Dissertation is organized in six chapters, chapter one covers the Introductory
part. Chapter two covers a Literature review on the Taxpayers Education Program on
Voluntary Tax Compliance among Small and Medium Enterprises and research
questions while chapter three for the Methodology, chapter four covers presentation
of findings, and chapter five covers Discussion of the findings and chapter six covers
conclusions and recommendations.