Investigating Different Actors’ Perceptions of Information Technology (IT) in the Taxation System through Structuration Theory Approach

“Tax system reform plan” is one of the basic parts of socio-economic development strategies in Iran. This reform is based on a comprehensive program for developing and deploying new Information Technology (IT) and improving the efficiency of the tax system. In this program, integrated tax software and databases are created and developed in order to tackle tax evasion and tax fraud. Despite the social agreement about the necessity of technological reform in tax system, changes are slow and no expected results have been achieved. Factors, such as delays in the implementation of this plan and ambiguity about its socio-economic effects, along with the conflicts of interest of the different groups involved in changes, have led to different perceptions among tax system actors and caused resistance to change. Understanding the actors’ perceptions, possible conflicts, and agreements facilitates the design and implementation of technological programs, as well as dealing with social resistances. This research focused on 3 groups of actors involved in technological changes of tax system: policy makers (top managers of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and tax administration) as the strategists of reform plans and tax officers and taxpayers, who were users of the new information system. In this article, the different actors’ perceptions about technological changes in the tax system were studied. In this regard, a sociological approach was deployed by using the concepts of structuration. In addition to Giddens’s dimensions of the duality of structure, “duality of technology” as the Structuration model of technology was considered by the authors. This conceptual framework allowed a deeper and more dialectical understanding of the interaction between technology, organizational structure, and actors. 

Matching the concepts of Structuration theory with the subject of this article, the actors’ discursive and practical awarenesses were considered as a manifestation of their perceptions. The actors’ discursive consciousness about the interactions between IS and the tax system structure was assumed as their explanation of the ideal state of this phenomenon. On the other hand, their practical consciousness was considered as their real experiences about it. According to Giddens, structure is the sum of “rules and resources organized as the properties of social systems”. In this article, the structures included rules, such as laws, policies, strategies, formal organizational structures, and internal and external organizational resources, including budget, technical equipment, human resources, and knowledge. In this study, a narrative research method was used to go beyond personal opinions and recognize collective views and mindsets. From among the narrative research types, “analysis of narrative” was chosen. The stories were collected as data and analyzed with paradigmatic processes. Paradigmatic analysis results in the descriptions of the themes that are held across the stories or in the taxonomies of types of stories, characters, or settings. Applying this method allowed the researchers to achieve a general model based on the common themes by combining individual experiences. In this study, two different tools were used to collect the actors’ stories. Due to the difficulty of accessing the policy makers and senior officials of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance and the tax system, their narratives were collected by referring to the texts of the interviews and the ministers’ official reports of economy and heads of the Tax Organization. Through judgmental sampling of the texts, 11 interviews and reports were selected and analyzed. The stories of the tax officers (18 persons were interviewed) and tax payers (24 persons were interviewed) were collected through in-depth interviews.

The narratives of each group of actors reflected their priorities and expectations of technological changes, as well as their experiences in this regard. The results revealed the actors' perceptions about the consequences of technological changes in the tax system, the rules and resources that affected it, and how technology interacted with those rules and resources. In addition, the conflicts and agreements related to the actors’ perceptions were identified. According to the analysis results of the narratives, the tax policy-makers believed that the reform plans had improved the rules and regulations of the tax system and enhanced its performance. They emphasized on the role of IS in facilitating the collection of taxpayers' financial information (as the most important factor in tax audits), implementing new risk-based tax audit methods, and deploying BI as a tool. In contrast, the tax officers and taxpayers believed that the reforms had not met the expectations due to the lack of training programs and cultural challenges. They believed that deploying IT had complicated work processes and increased conflicts between the tax officers and taxpayers.