Assessing e-Government Services: The Case of e-Filing of Personal Income Tax in Malaysia

Abstract

Introduction of Electronic Government (e-Government) is seen as a tool to improve government service delivery to external and internal clients for the benefit of the government and the citizens and businesses that it serves. E-Government holds tremendous promise for improvements in the public service delivery as well to overcome many of the persistent public service problems. Successful delivery of online services has rapidly become an important measure of effective public sector management. The e-Government initiative in Malaysia was launched with the aim to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government service delivery to its stakeholders, namely, citizens and businesses. The vision of e-Government is a vision for people in government, business and citizenry working together for the benefit of Malaysia and all of its citizens. The dual objectives of e-Government are to reinvent the government of Malaysia in terms of service delivery through the use of information technology and to catalyze the successful development of the Multimedia Super Corridor with IT as one of the leading sectors of the economy. One of the services that was launched as part of e-Government Flagship is on line tax filling or known as e-Filing by the Inland Revenue Board. Via this system, the taxpayers are able to complete an electronic application form and the necessary payment details within few keystrokes and hence complete their revenue declaration within minutes. The purpose of e-Filing service is to encourage every taxpayer to submit their income tax return through an online system, thus reducing the manual paper-based submission method. This system has received good response from the taxpayers. However, there is still a sizeable number who have yet to adopt e-Filing. An empirical assessment of adoption of e-Filing system involving 200 tax payers was carried out. The study aims to assess the extent of e-filling acceptance among the tax payers who have filed their tax forms online. Beyond this, the chapter also analyses the factors that contribute towards adoption of such system in Malaysia. The findings revealed that taxpayers have positive attitude in using the e-Filing system as they perceive that tax submission method via internet is more convenient than submission by post or by hand and that perceived readiness towards using this technology is paramount to their belief for using e-Filing system.