Tax Education to Enhance Tax Compliance for Socio-Economic Development

Background

As per the Income Tax Act (Act no 24 of 1981), individuals receiving income and businesses generating revenues are subject to taxation and hence they have the responsibility of filing tax returns. There are a variety of taxes like customs and excise tax, corporate tax, withholding tax and value added tax (VAT) but the most central among them is individual income tax as it is the most popular in Namibia and accounts for a large portion of the government’s revenue. The Namibian government depends on taxes as the main source of revenue (Annual National Accounts Report, 2017). Tax law compliance is a fundamental step for the tax revenue generation to the government. The improved tax collection approaches, such as deducting from source and through self-assessment, are essential for the government to enhance economic growth and the provision of services such as housing, education, rural electrification and health, among others. However, having greater non-compliance by the taxpayers reflects tax-burden to the compliant taxpayers as the revenue collection is less in comparison to the fundamental government expenditures. Non-compliance in this context can be both intentional (where the taxpayer totally disregards the tax laws) and accidental (taxpayers do not know their tax obligations due to ignorance about the tax laws). However, the taxpayers in the decision to comply consider the level of income, audit probabilities, taxation rates, and magnitude of the fines (Allingham & Sandmo, 1972). Nonetheless, for taxpayers, tax payment seems to be an expense or a burden since their desire is to maximise disposable income hence their resistance to pay tax. In this regard, IRD had to introduce a sufficient approach to enhance tax compliance by acquiring a tax system that would attract more compliance to tax returns. The government can overcome this resistance by different measures like deducting tax from source, tax incentives, tax education, etc. From these, some appear to be mandatory, some conditional, while taxpayer education would lead to willingness to pay tax and a high level of tax compliance. Hence, the key purpose of taxpayer education is to inform taxpayers about their tax duties, enhance revenue through tax compliance and change attitude towards tax payment as citizens.