Salaried Taxpayers’ Internal States and Assessment Performance Under Self-Assessment System

Malaysian individual tax system had evolved notably since its introduction in 1967. The first reform that impact all taxpayers was the implementation of self-assessment system (SAS) to replace the old assessment system in 2004. This is because SAS had entirely changed the taxpayers’ responsibilities from being assessed by the tax authority to a person who is responsible for assessing own income tax liability. This had triggered debates on whether taxpayers can perform their responsibilities that were previously handled by trained tax personnel. In conjunction with this issue, this paper reports the findings of a quasi-experimental evaluation of salaried individual taxpayers’ in the early stage of SAS implementation. The findings of this study are still relevant to date because even though SAS had been implemented for more than a decade, the problem of taxpayer performance is continuing due to the dynamic nature of taxation in reality. Specifically, this paper reports the influence of taxpayer’s internal states and taxpayer assistance on assessment performance of the individual salaried taxpayers. The data was collected using a quasi-experimental method known as posttest-only no-treatment control group design. The sample comprised post-graduate students, who were actual taxpayers. Among the elements of the taxpayer’s internal states considered in this study, tax knowledge was found to have a significant relationship with assessment performance. Further analysis was conducted which showed that the majority of tax knowledge dimensions had a significant relationship with taxpayer assessment performance.