Ways of seeking tax knowledge and its impact on tax personnel competency

It is the expectation of stakeholders that tax authorities should be highly competent in order to provide effective compliance strategies, better delivery of services and assuring an increase in tax collection. However, the statistic of the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (IRBM) Tax Operation Department (2021) shows that the number of unresolved cases based on the year cases were assigned reported increasing trend over time which disturbed the tax collection and trigger the lack of competency among tax personnel in completing their tasks. The purpose of this study is to identify the ways of seeking tax knowledge among tax personnel and to examine the relationship between ways of seeking tax knowledge and IRBM tax personnel’s competency. Ninety-two usable survey questionnaires were collected from Large Taxpayer Branch of IRBM which were distributed to respondents through WhatsApp application and email and subsequently analysed using the Statistics Package of Social Science Version 27. This study reveals five ways of seeking tax knowledge among tax personnel which are tax recent updates, on the job training, additional references, tax website and academic qualification. Further, on job training has been found to have positive significant relationship with tax personnel competency. While, tax website has been found to have negative significant relationship with tax personnel competency; others were insignificant. The findings of this study provide new dimensions of tax knowledge seeking to improve tax personnel’s competency. This study recommends that tax personnel should attend on job training frequently in order to continuously improve their tax competency specifically in carrying out audit works.