A Compulsory Research Report Submitted to Mzumbe University – Mbeya Campus College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Award of Bachelor of Laws [LL.B] Degree of Mzumbe University
Most of the tax payer in Tanzania pay, tax without filing the annual returns and they complain about paying more tax than what they are supposed to pay. This research focuses on the causes and effects of the taxpayer’s failure to file the annual returns during tax liability. This research was done through the interviews, and schedules on the sample size 30 respondents selected specifically from business man, tax consultants and TRA officials, but pick randomly within groups. From the research it was found that, failure to file annual return by the tax payer is caused by the many reasons including; tax payer lack of knowledge on tax law and procedure to be followed during their tax assessment and lack of enough fund to bear the cost for preparing the necessary for the annual returns and other said that the causes of failure to filling annual return is due to tax payer intended to evading paying tax. Also, failure to file the annual returns has the effect to high tax being imposed to the tax payer, sometime low tax imposed to tax payer, the government to loss a lot of revenue, and a lot of complains to the tax payer. At the end the researcher recommends that the law should change in order to simplify the requirements for filing the annual returns to enable even the normal businessperson to file them. Secondly, the tax payers should be educated on the procedure required for them to follow during the period of tax assessment in order for them to have fair tax assessment. Third, TRA tax assessors should not unreasonably impose higher tax on the tax payers. Lastly, tax assessors should visit the tax payers before imposing tax liability on the tax payer. If these recommendations are followed, enough revenue will be collected by the government, business and investment will not be hindered as per Tanzania’s tax policy, but also will reduce the problem of tax payer always to complain about paying high tax than what they supposed to pay.