A Research Report Submitted to Mzumbe University – Mbeya Campus College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award of Bachelor’s Degree of Accounting and Finance in Business sector (BAF-BS) of Mzumbe University.
Tax is a very important source of government revenue an important determinant of the economy of any country, traditionally tax functions have functioned in difficult ways often involving conflicts but things have been changing with the use of technology. The purpose of this study is to investigate what potential does technology has in improving taxpayer’s perception towards the Tanzania Revenue Authority.
The case study was TRA - Mbeya for collecting data from the staff and businesses which are customers in that TRA branch. The objectives of this study were to determine technological means integrated in TRA’s services provision, to determine taxpayer’s perceptions towards technologies used by TRA’s such as EFD’s and to determine the contribution of technology in improving taxpaying habit. A total of 25 respondents were selected for this study, 20 from micro and small businesses, and 5 were TRA staffs.
The study used tables, figures, and cross-tabulations for descriptive analysis while regression analysis was used to find the relationship between tax systems and their influence on taxpaying habit. Primary data was collected by the use of a questionnaire with closed. The study revealed that TRA through its directorate of information and communication technology has succeeded in integrating technologies in tax administration. The findings on EFD indicates there is a positive perception for EFD’s functionality hence the majority of taxpayers demonstrated advantages of using EFDs machine in revenue collection. The technology used in tax was found to help in reducing corruption, improving tax knowledge and less time wastage, and government tax transparency is becoming much better as the utilization of ICT reduces leakages. The regression analysis indicating there is a positive correlation between the taxpaying habit and the TRA systems.
The study recommends that TRA should provide more education to taxpayers on different technologies used by the authority, it should also make it easier for lenders to evaluate businesses loan eligibility by integrating EFD’s functionalities to financial institutions databases.