Ensuring Continued Usage of an E-Government Service in Malaysia: The Role of Perceived Usefulness and User Satisfaction

Background

E-Filing system in Malaysia was introduced in 2006 by the Malaysian Inland Revenue Board (IRBM) to the Malaysian taxpayers. E-Filing system as a whole integrates tax preparation, tax filing and tax payment, which serves as a major advantage over traditional manual procedure (Ambali, 2009). Under the e-filing system, taxpayers need to fill their tax returns electronically via internet. The submission via e-filing has shown a tremendous increase since its launching in 2006 particularly for individual taxpayers. The number of submission grew from 186,271 (2006) to 873,095 (2007) (Annual Report IRBM, 2007) to 1,171,105 (2008) to 1,466,507 (2009) (Annual Report IRBM, 2009) to 1,666,134 (Annual Report IRBM, 2010). This shows that 33% of the total registered individual taxpayers (5,040,782) have filed their income taxes via e-filing in 2010 (Annual Report IRBM, 2010). The number of submission increases further to 1, 800,000 (2011) and 2,100,000 (2012) (New Straits Times, 2012) (refer to Figure 1). Various advantages are highlighted that can be provided by e-filing system such as the IRBM improves the efficiency of the tax assessment method, by increasing tax collection and reducing computation errors. Secondly, it saves taxpayers’ time as tax returns are sent electronically to the IRBM. Thirdly, cost effective as it reduces cost on printing, imaging, postal and storage since it is paperless. Finally, the tax calculation is more accurate due to automatic calculation and detection of mathematical errors and incomplete fields by the system (Hasmah, 2009).