dc.description.abstract | Due to globalization and streamlining, revenue authorities have responded to implementing
strategies by managing tasks through projects and enhance quality of taxpayer services,
optimize resources within limited budgets and complete them within timelines and budgets.
In recent years, Kenya Revenue Authority has introduced iTax system, which enables
taxpayers to declare their tax payable by themselves at the comfort of their homes and
offices. The reason for undertaking this research was to establish the factors that affect
acceptance of the iTax system in Kenya Revenue Authority. The study variables included
system coverage, technology suitability, security of system and taxpayers’ attitude towards
technology. The research design was descriptive with the target population comprising of the
landlords in Eastlands region of Nairobi and who are registered with the KRA as rental
income taxpayers. The population of the study was 5330 taxpayer property owners in
Eastlands, Nairobi. A sample of 98 respondents was selected using Yamane’s sampling
formula. The sampling formula used was: n=N/(1+Ne2). Primary data was gathered by use of
a questionnaire that was piloted to determine its reliability and validity prior to being
administered to the respondents. The research attained a response rate of 79%. The findings
show that the iTax system is widely accepted because the taxpayers believe that it has a wide
coverage and is reliable, its technology is user-friendly and taxpayers have a positive attitude
towards it. However, acceptance of the iTax system is still low because of the belief that it is
not very secure. Majority of respondents believe that the iTax system provides fast and
reliable answers to their tax enquiries. Majority of respondents strongly agreed that
technology used in iTax has been easily adopted by taxpayers and that they do not encounter
difficulties when filing tax returns online. Most of the respondents agreed that the online iTax
system has simplified the filing of tax returns and that it save them a lot of time. The results
of the correlation analysis showed that all the four variables have positive correlation with the
independent variable but at different strengths. Technology suitability, attitude towards
technology and system coverage had strong positive correlation with Acceptance of iTax at
0.871, 0.888 and 0.827 respectively. System security had a low positive relationship of 0.399
with acceptance of iTax system. The recommendations put forward are that iTax awareness
seminars should be held for taxpayers in order to create a positive attitude by taxpayers
towards the system. The capacity of the KRA web portal needs to be improved so that cases
of system congestion are minimized or eliminated. The security features of the iTax system
should be enhanced in order to assure taxpayers of the confidentiality of the information they
provide online. Taxpayers’ usernames and passwords should be should be protected and
secured from unauthorized access. In order to expand the knowledge on iTax system a
research on the impact of iTax system on tax revenues should be undertaken in order to shed
light on how KRA has improved tax revenues because of the iTax System. According to the
findings, it was established that the ICT department of the KRA should continually develop
softwares that can be used to upgrade the itax system in order to cope with increased and
varied demands of the taxpayers. Such upgrades when undertaken should be seamless and
cause no interruptions to the users of the system. | en_US |