An overview of the moderating effect of a simplified tax administration system on compliance and taxpayers’ perceptions
Date
2022-06-30
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Abstract
The Tax Administration Act and systems are the most important pieces of legislation and mechanisms that should be in place and need to be executed with thorough care, efficiency, and considering the taxpayer’s attitude, behaviours, and the general economic and tax environment. In the South African context, there is a need to increase the collection of revenue and enforcement to provide quality services. There are still challenges and uncertainties across multiple tax disciplines, and difficulties in the implementation of these tax laws. Therefore, there are misalignments and challenges within the administration processes, both from a legislative and practical perspective. Several significant changes have been identified and has led to the improvements within the South African tax system, these changes to the system arise from various interventions such as “remodeling of the independent tax and customs administration.” These and many other significant changes have aided and contributed to a relatively robust and competitive tax system. The current South African administration system is stable and favourably compared with those of many developed and emerging economies. The study concluded and noted multiple variables that can be identified as misalignments and gaps within the administration, these range from both operational and legislative perspectives, such as the audit process, SARS service delivery during COVID-19, granting extensions, difficulties within the use of E-filing, debt management process, difficulties around the implementations of the health promotional levy, SARS in working with various stakeholders and regulatory bodies and many more other issues. As a result, tax compliance depends on many factors, other than deterrence, and the perceptions of taxpayers are more likely to be influenced by these factors and gaps within the tax administration system. Therefore, it is important to work towards creating a balance in our tax system by improving the administration system, while simultaneously bringing in more revenue collection without impairing the taxpayer’s behaviour and perceptions
Description
A Research Project completed in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Commerce in Taxation,University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022
Keywords
Taxpayers’ Behaviour, Tax Compliance, Tax revenue authority, Tax administration, Tax evasion, Avoidance and Perceptions, UCTD
Citation
Manganya, Andile Khulekani. (2022). An overview of the moderating effect of a simplified tax administration system on compliance and taxpayers’ perceptions [Master’s dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. wIREDSPACE. https://hdl.handle.net/10539/38611