Determinants of Online Tax Payment System in Malaysia

Abstract

Government in various countries has invested billions of money in information system development in order to provide better delivery services to its citizens. However, there were reports that those systems were underutilized. In Malaysia, online tax payment system is provided to facilitate the taxpayers to pay their taxes electronically via the tax authority website. Yet, the taxpayers are not using the system despite of its two year existence in the community. Thus, identifying factors contributing to taxpayers acceptance of the said system is very important so that the present online tax payment system can be further enhanced and will accordingly lead to the increase of its usage level. To date, none of the technology acceptance research has been conducted to evaluate taxpayers acceptance of online tax payment system in Malaysia. Therefore to overcome this deficiency, this study is being conducted. The main objective of this study is to identify factors affecting taxpayers acceptance of online tax payment system in Malaysia. An online survey has been conducted for a one month period that is from 28 January to 28 February 2009. Using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as its foundation, this study includes additional constructs namely subjective norms, self-efficacy, perceived credibility and amount of information in the research framework. The findings indicate that besides perceived usefulness, subjective norms and self-efficacy are also significant predictors of intention to use online tax payment system in Malaysia. However, no significant influence is found for perceived ease of use, perceived credibility and amount of information. Overall, this study offers important insights to the tax authority in improving and enriching their online services in general and online tax payment system, in particular.