PUBLIC SERVICE QUALITY AND ETHICS IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT: AN EMPIRICAL SURVEY AND THE VERIFICATION OF THE TAXATION BUREAU IN TAIWAN

Abstract

In order to highlight the spirit of serving people and to understand the effectiveness of the tax service and its ethics in a selected case study, two empirical investigation methods were conducted: one took the form of face-to-face interviews, and the other was a telephone questionnaire survey. The survey was conducted from October 16 to November 15, 2019, at between 09:00 and 17:00 every day, and mainly included two types of respondents – land administration agents and public consultants. It collected 142 valid responses, to which descriptive statistics and Chi-squared analysis were applied. Based on the results of the empirical analysis of the survey, the respondents gave good assessments of service quality and ethical performance, with both achieving more than 80% satisfaction, and an overall assessment score of 88.9%. This score shows that the Taxation Bureau’s service is generally well regarded. On the other hand, based on the results of cross analysis, we found that “occupation” and “status” are both key background factors that affect respondents’ assessments of the Taxation Bureau. Finally, the survey results also show that some groups with specific backgrounds are willing to expose illegal behaviors. These results correspond with previous research which suggests that local residents with a college education or above have a low tolerance for government corruption.