Challenges of Tax Administration in Arada Sub-City of Addis Ababa City Administration

Abstract

Tax administration is a component of public administration designed to control the processes and operations of public revenues in accordance with new public management approaches which focuses on efficiency, performance measurement and requirements of good governance. Governments require tax administration and compliance to produce revenue from private entities to provide public goods and services. Ethiopia needs to use domestic based resources mainly obtained from tax like Value Added Tax. The study has focused on addressing issues relating VAT administration factors affecting VAT revenue performance. In order to generate appropriate VAT, its administration should be efficient. Therefore, the study has been conducted on analysis of VAT administration efectivness in Arada sub city of Addis Ababa city administration. The study raised major research questions related to VAT registration, assessment, collection, investigation, refund and Tax payers Service Delivery. In order to achieve the purpose of the study. In order to address the questions, descriptive research method and purposive and stratified simple random sampling techniques were employed to gather data. Respondents who have been participated in the study were officers from Arada sub-city small and micro tax payer's office and tax payer in Arada. According to the response of the respondents, certain factors were found to be the main constraints at Arada Sub City VAT administration. These were:- lack of well trained and credible tax officials mainly in taxpayers identification and registration process; lack of well trained officials to use SIGTAS (Standard Integrated Government Tax Administration System) so not possible to know the exact number of active VAT registrants, to identify and control non filers or stop filers using the computer system. In addition; the office facilities and procedures are not supportive to comply for taxpayer and tax officer, no audit plan based on risk assessment, weak enforcement, absence of well organized taxpayers' education and assistance program about VAT, poor refund management and low voluntary compliance of taxpayers in the Sub City are the main constraints. Finally based on the findings, possible solutions were given. These include; improve taxpayer identification and registration, improve VAT collection, develop planned auditing, establish effective enforcement mechanisms, and improve service delivery, voluntary compliance of taxpayers and refund manage