Abstract:
The major purpose of this study was to determine the accounting skills required by personal income tax administrators in Plateau state for effective operations. The study sought answers to four research questions and tested four null hypotheses. Survey research design was adopted for the study and the population comprised of 209 inspectors of taxes and 62 accounting lecturers. The entire population was studied. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection while Cronbach Alpha Reliability technique was employed to test the reliability which yielded a coefficient of 0.76. Mean and Standard Deviation were used to answer the four research questions while the four hypotheses were tested using t-test statistic at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that personal income tax administrators require accounting skills for preparation of final accounts, income tax assessment, computation of chargeable income tax and information and communication technology skills for effective operations. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended that regular workshops, seminars, conferences and in-service training programmes should be organized for personal income tax administrators on accounting skills to enable them update their knowledge for better performance and well qualified professionals especially members of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN) should be employed as inspectors of taxes.
