USABILITY ASSESSMENT OF FIRS WEBSITE IN NIGERIA
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background of the study
Tax payment has been made easier with electronic platforms such as the Federal Inland Revenue Service website (FIRS). Taxpayers now consummate tax transactions any, anytime, with ease and at the comfort of their homes with any payment platforms. The usability of FIRS website has been confirmed to be a reliable source of revenue generation to the Nigerian government Provision of Defense and National Security. Website service quality, which is often times termed e-service quality, is defined as consumers’ overall evaluation of the high quality of eservice
offerings in the existing online marketplace. The quality of e-service does not stand still. Because it is so easy to copy by competitors, individuals, etc in the on-line world, any feature introduced by a company can be quickly duplicated or matched by its competitors. The result is an increased form of change and development with new ideas emerging, changing surviving or dying at a rapid rate. Their quality is greased by competition (Ebele 2012).
Regardless of evidence of continuing consumer dissatisfaction with service rendered through the Internet, studies of e-service quality remain limited and frequently get the services of instruments that were developed for use in a traditional environment. Several investigations has been carried out on e-government over the past five years, they pointed that the computerization of taxation services is one area in which all countries especially the European countries score highly. The aspect of paying and collecting tax on-line is making the process easy and catchy to citizens. It has been verified that the computerization of taxation has been at the leading edge of e government for many years. Governments and tax authorities can also make available various motives for citizens to file on-line, a major factor in the success of such systems is the design quality of the public interface. Service quality has become a very important determinant of website success in all areas of commercial life. It is even more important on a site that needs the citizens to declare their income and/or assets and possible pay over some of their hard earned cash to the state. Problems associated with non-usability of the federal Inland Revenue service website are as follows; Non remittance of Taxes: It has been observed that some of these collecting agents deliberately delayed the remittance of taxes paid and in most cases these payments are not remitted at all to the coffer of Federal Inland Revenue Services
