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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 9, No. 4
Publication Date: April 25, 2022
DOI:10.14738/assrj.94.12118. Nainggolan, S. G. V., Wahyuni, P., Gustina, I., & Rinaldi, M. (2022). Factors that can Influence the Motivation of Individual Tax
Payment in Medan City. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(4). 44-54.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Factors that can Influence the Motivation of Individual Tax
Payment in Medan City
Susan Grace Veranita Nainggolan
Department of Accounting
Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Ekonomi Eka Prasetya, Medan, Indonesia
Putri wahyuni
Department of Accounting
Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Ekonomi Eka Prasetya, Medan, Indonesia
Ihdina Gustina
Department of Management
Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Ekonomi Eka Prasetya, Medan, Indonesia
Muammar Rinaldi
Department of Accounting
Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Ekonomi Eka Prasetya, Medan, Indonesia
ABSTRACT
Factors That Can Affect the Motivation of Individual Tax Payment in Medan City.
This study aimed to look at the factors that influence the motivation to pay taxes
which include Tax Knowledge, Service Quality, and Taxpayer Awareness. The type
of data used in this research is quantitative data. Analysis of the data in this study
utilized Multiple Linear Regression Test by transforming the data using the interval
successive method (MSI). This study proved that Tax Knowledge, Service Quality,
and Taxpayer Awareness spurred public compliance in paying taxes. Therefore, the
Tax Service Office can use social media such as Instagram or Facebook accounts to
quickly disseminate information about taxation knowledge.
Keywords: Tax Knowledge, Service Quality, Mandatory Awareness, Motivation
INTRODUCTION
Infrastructure development, which is increasing rapidly, is forcing the government to work
hard in term of increasing the state revenue, which is supported by taxes. Taxes have an
important role in the source of state revenue because the largest state revenue comes from the
tax sector. Tax is a person's contribution to the state treasury based on the Law with no direct
feedback that can be shown and used to pay general expenses (Adincha, 2012). Taxes
themselves make a major contribution to economic development in Indonesia and are an
important source of funds for national financing. There are many efforts made by the
Directorate General of Taxes to maximize tax revenues, such as the tax census, which encourage
all individual and corporate taxpayers who have not carried out their tax obligations can
immediately implement them by tax provisions. Abdullah (2018) revealed that taxes are still
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Nainggolan, S. G. V., Wahyuni, P., Gustina, I., & Rinaldi, M. (2022). Factors that can Influence the Motivation of Individual Tax Payment in Medan
City. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(4). 44-54.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.94.12118
the mainstay of the government in term of state revenues as the fund for national development
to realize welfare for the community.
Tax problems in Indonesia continue to occur, even though taxes are an obligation for the people
as citizens, but there are still many citizens who do not pay taxes. Many personal business
taxpayers do not pay taxes, this is due to the low motivation of the public in paying taxes. This
can be related to the theory of goal setting which explains that the intention to achieve goals is
the main source of work motivation (Locke, 1968). Motivation is one of the factors that
encourage someone in taking an action, if the taxpayer's motivation is high in paying his tax
obligations, then development in Indonesia can proceed as planned. The city of Medan is one of
33 level II regions in North Sumatra, in 2020 the population of the city of Medan reaches
2,435,252 people, of which 36,522 people are in the Medan Polonia sub-district (Central Bureau
of Statistics, 2020). One of the tax service offices located in the Medan Polonia sub-district is
the KPP Pratama Medan, the people’s participation in paying taxes in this sub-district is still
classified as low, and this is due to the lack of enthusiasm that arises from the community.
Improving this requires high motivation. Success in tax revenue cannot be separated from the
motivation of taxpayers (Abdullah & Nainggolan, 2018). From the results of interviews with the
Public Relations section at the Medan Polonia Tax Service Office, it can be seen that several
problems occured, namely the low motivation of taxpayers' willingness to pay their taxes so
that some taxpayers receive sanctions, the issuance of forced letters to pay taxes to taxpayers
and the low number of Annual Tax Return that goes into the Medan Polonia Tax Service Office.
The problems that arise in the Tax Service Office are characteristics that describe the lack of
motivation to pay taxes. Abdullah (2018) stated that the cause of the decrease in motivation to
pay taxes is knowledge of taxes. In his research on the effect of knowledge of taxpayers,
awareness of taxpayers on motivation to pay taxes explained that there is a positive influence
between knowledge of taxpayers and motivation to pay taxes, knowledge of taxpayers is very
important in increasing people's willingness to pay taxes. Tax knowledge is an important factor
in helping taxpayers to carry out their obligations. Knowledge of taxation, which means
taxpayers know the basic information of taxation so that taxpayers are willing to comply with
applicable tax rules and regulations. Tax knowledge of a taxpayer can be measured through
knowledge and understanding of rights, obligations, and responsibilities as a taxpayer. The
knowledge possessed by taxpayers about good taxation will minimize the occurrence of tax
evasion (Tresnalyani & Jati, 2018). Rodriguez-Justicia & Theilen (2018) stated that good
taxpayer knowledge can have an impact on tax compliance. In addition to knowledge, service
can also affect motivation in paying taxes.
Based on the Law of the Republic of Indonesia No. 25 of 2011 concerning public services,
service is a series of activities in terms of meeting service needs, by statutory regulations on
goods, services, or administrative services provided by the government. Yayat (2017) stated
that public service is an effort made by a group or a bureaucratic person to assist the community
to achieve a certain goal. Service quality is defined as the ability of an organization to meet or
exceed customer expectations (Parasuraman et al., 1985). From the explanation above, it can
be explained that improving the quality of public services is a very important issue. This
happens because, on the one hand, the community's demands for service quality are getting
bigger while the practice of service providers does not experience significant changes. The basis
for this research is because public knowledge about taxes is quite good. Therefore, this study
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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 9, Issue 4, April-2022
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
wanted to see how much influence taxpayer knowledge, service quality, and taxpayer
awareness have on motivation in paying taxes.
Figure 1. Thinking Framework
METHOD
This study used tax knowledge, service quality, and taxpayer awareness as independent
variables. In addition, the variable of motivation to pay taxes is used as the dependent variable.
Figure 1 outlines the research plan. The purpose of this research was to see how much influence
taxpayer knowledge, service quality, and taxpayer awareness have on motivation in paying
taxes. This research is located in Medan City, North Sumatra. The research period is from March
to June 2020. The data source used by the researcher is primary data. Primary data is the type
of data collected by distributing questionnaires which are measured by a Likert scale (Santoso
et al., 2018). This study distributed questionnaires directly to individual taxpayers in the city
of Medan.
The population used in this study is the individual taxpayers in the city of Medan. The sampling
of this study applied an accidental sampling technique which is a sampling technique based on
chance, meaning that anyone who coincidentally meets a researcher can be used as a sample
that fits the research criteria. (Payadnya & Jayantika, 2018), this was obtained by 40 people
based on accidental sampling, namely individual taxpayers in Medan City within 3 days. The
model in this study used multiple linear equations, where the analytical tool used was multiple
linear regression analysis which aims to examine the effect of two or more independent
variables on the dependent variable. The multiple linear regression equation models in this
study are as follows:
� = � + �1�1 + �2�2 + �3�3 + � (1)
Description
Y = Taxpayer Motivation
a = constant
X1 = Tax Knowledge
X2 = Service Quality
X3 = Taxpayer Awareness
b1 -b3 = Regression Coefficients of the
respective independent variable
e = Error
Tax Knowledge
Taxpayer Awareness
Service quality Motivation to pay taxes
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Nainggolan, S. G. V., Wahyuni, P., Gustina, I., & Rinaldi, M. (2022). Factors that can Influence the Motivation of Individual Tax Payment in Medan
City. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(4). 44-54.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.94.12118
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Descriptive statistics
Based on the results of the questionnaire, several things related to the characteristics contained
in the sample of this study were obtained. The results of the data tabulation stated that the
number of respondents categorized based on their age are as follow: from 20-30 years were 19
people, 10 people were 31-40 years old, 10 people were 41-50 years old and one person was
50 years old and above, the biggest average age level of the respondents is between 20 to 30
years. Based on the gender of the respondents, there were 23 men and 17 women. The
education level of the respondents was 14 people with high school education and 26 people
with undergraduate education. Furthermore, the respondents in this study worked as
employees. Based on the Taxpayer Identification Number, 30 people owned Taxpayer
Identification Number while the other 10 people don’t. Characteristics of respondents can be
seen in table 1.
Table 1. Characteristics of Respondents
Characteristics Criteria Number of people)
Age 20 – 30 years 19
31 – 40 years 10
41 – 50 years 10
> 50 years 1
Gender Man 23
Woman 17
Education High School / Equivalent 14
Undergraduate 26
Postgraduate -
Work Employee 40
Businessman -
Taxpayer Identification
Number
Registered 30
Not Registered 10
Validity and Reliability Test
Before conducting research, the questionnaire must go through an initial trial using validity and
reliability tests so that this research is accurate in solving problems. A validity test is used to
measure the validity of a questionnaire. If the correlation of each factor is positive and greater
than 0.312 (Rtable), then the factor is a strong construct. So based on the factor analysis, it can
be concluded that the instrument has good construct validity. Knowledge of taxation has 6 valid
statement items and has a value Cronbach's Alpha of 0.617, the quality of tax services has 10
valid statements and has a value of Cronbach's Alpha of 0.859, then Taxpayer Awareness has
12 valid statements and Taxpayer Motivation has 6 valid statements and has value Cronbach's
Alpha of 0.930, the test results can be seen in table 2.
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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 9, Issue 4, April-2022
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Table 2. Validity Test Results
Statement Description Statement Description
Tax Knowledge (X1)
Statement 1 Valid Statement 4 Valid
Statement 2 Valid Statement 5 Valid
Statement 3 Valid Statement 6 Valid
Tax Service Quality (X2)
Statement 1 Valid Statement 6 Valid
Statement 2 Valid Statement 7 Valid
Statement 3 Valid Statement 8 Valid
Statement 4 Valid Statement 9 Valid
Statement 5 Valid Statement 10 Valid
Taxpayer Awareness (X3)
Statement 1 Valid Statement 7 Valid
Statement 2 Valid Statement 8 Valid
Statement 3 Valid Statement 9 Valid
Statement 4 Valid Statement 10 Valid
Statement 5 Valid Statement 11 Valid
Statement 6 Valid Statement 12 Valid
Taxpayer Motivation (Y)
Statement 1 Valid Statement 4 Valid
Statement 2 Valid Statement 5 Valid
Statement 3 Valid Statement 6 Valid
Classic assumption test
This test is a prerequisite test before performing multiple linear regression analysis. Normality
test aims to test whether, in the regression model, the confounding or residual variables has a
normal distribution. Normality testing can be done by looking at pictures of normal probability
plots. Figure 2 shows that the data spread along a diagonal line. The results of this test indicated
that the data are normally distributed. The heteroscedasticity test aims to test whether in the
regression model there is an inequality of variance from the residuals of one observation to
another observation. The way to detect the presence of heteroscedasticity is to look at the
scatterplot graph shown in Figure 3. Multicollinearity test aims to test whether the regression
model found a correlation between independent variables. The results obtained from this test
indicated that the independent variables (Tax Knowledge, Tax Service Quality, and Taxpayer
Awareness) do not experience multicollinearity problems.