Determinants of taxpayers' adoption of electronic filing methods in Taiwan: An exploratory study

Abstract

Using the personal income tax filing as an example of e-governmental services, this paper seeks to develop an understanding of the factors that influence citizens' adoption of electronic tax-filing services based on empirical data gathered from a large-scale nationwide survey. The taxpayers' satisfaction and usage intention regarding the use of tax-filing services, and the relationship between them, were examined. In addition, a stepwise discriminant analysis was used to develop a multivariate model that distinguishes among taxpayers using different filing methods on the basis of demographic attributes. Results indicated that taxpayers who adopted the manual tax-filing method perceived lowest overall satisfaction level. Internet filing seemed to perform best in most of the subdimensions of satisfaction and was perceived as the most efficient method, in contrast to its counterparts. In addition, taxpayers' levels of satisfaction were strongly associated with usage intentions toward tax-filing methods for the subsequent year. Furthermore, results of the discriminant analysis demonstrated that there are distinguishable demographic characteristics that can be used by the government to identify those taxpayers who are most likely to adopt a particular tax-filing method. Understanding these factors can extend our knowledge of taxpayers' decision making and lead to better planning and implementation of e-government services.