Exercise duty administration, tax automation and revenue performance in Uganda: A case of Uganda Revenue Authority

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to establish the relationship between excise duty administration, tax automation and revenue performance at the URA. Data was collected from 199 selected staff and tax payers using self administered questionnaires and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The findings revealed that excise duty administration, tax automation and revenue performance predicted 72.6% of the variance in the revenue performance of URA. The implication here is that there are other factors accounting for 27.4% of the variance in the revenue performance of URA. There is therefore need to undertake a study in future to establish what these factors are. Excise duty administration and tax automation were all found to be strong significant predictors of revenue performance.

From the findings, it was revealed that excise duty tax imposed on tax payers was not equitable, there was no equal treatment of taxpayers at all levels and assessment of excise duty tax were not raised on time and served to the taxpayers. This implied that the level of excise duty administration still had loopholes which the management of URA needed to draw attention to so as to ensure efficiency in the administration of excise duty. Likewise, the findings revealed a strong significant relationship between excise duty administration and tax automation which indicates that when the excise duty administration processes are automated, this was likely to improve level of efficiency of the tax administration processes at URA. The findings revealed that there was a strong significant relationship between excise duty administration and revenue performance which suggests that proper excise duty administration would result into enhanced revenue collection by the Authority. Therefore, the management of the Authority should put a lot of emphasis on ensuring that excise duty administration is effective as this is one of the means through which the performance of revenue will be enhanced.