The Effect of Process Re-engineering on Service Quality of the Department of Taxation: the Case of the Large Taxpayer Unit in Palestine

This study aims to evaluate the service quality of the Large Taxpayer Unit. The study examines the gaps between the expected and the perceived quality of the services provided using quality service dimensions (tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) and how these gaps vary with legal form, capital, age of the firm, headquarter location, number of visits to the large tax payer unit and the way of communication with the unit. The service quality is measured by the difference between the perceived quality and the expected quality. If the perceived quality is equal to or higher than the expected quality, it is satisfactory or ideal. However, if the perceived quality is less than the expected quality, it is unsatisfactory. To achieve the above goals, this study used a survey approach using a questionnaire based on “servqual” measurement of Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1988) as the mean of collecting data. The targeted population of the study included 482 taxpayers while the responding sample was 134 large taxpayer clustered geographically with the west bank regions (north ,middle, south and Jerusalem). After checking for the validity and the reliability of the instrument, the study results indicated that the quality of the perceived services provided by this unit is unsatisfactory with a mean of 4.15 on a seven-point scale while the expectation was higher with a mean of 5.28 meaning a gab of -1.133 which is significantly different from zero. This result indicates the shortage of the performance of the unit and the need to enhance the quality of the provided services. The study also indicated that the dimensions of response, trust and sympathy vary with the legal form of the firm while no other variation is noted with other classifying variables. Many recommendations are suggested namely: the need to take care of the taxpayers, treat them with trust, develop the quality of the services provided, and introduce the employees to the service quality concept through training courses in order to provide better services to large taxpayers.