The General Department of Taxation (GDT) has
officially launched a mediation software tool to help with financial management
information systems and tax data management.
The purpose of introducing it is to modernise
and automate revenue-sharing data between the tax data management and financial
information.
The system functions by transferring revenue
data from the tax data management system to the national and sub-national level
instead of issuing payment slips, which previously took a long time and
involved excessive paperwork and complicated procedures. It also facilitates
the transmission of tax revenue data by clearly separating types of taxes and
duties.
Kong Vibol, the GDT’s general director, said
that this is important for modernising tax revenue collection. He said so far
the GDT has modernised more tax systems to manage and improve revenue
mobilisation.
“We have provided the mediation tool between
General Department of Customs and Excise’s revenue collection system and we
will introduce the vehicle management system for the Ministry of Public Works
and Transport in the near future,” he said.
Secretary of State of the Ministry of Economy
and Finance (MEF) Hean Sahip said the financial management information system
(FMIS) has been connected with other systems including the Customs data
automation system, the Customs electronic system, the National Bank of Cambodia
and many commercial banks.
“This mediation system is a successful
achievement of the government’s financial public management reform policy in
order to manage and collect tax revenue efficiency,” he said.
Anthony Galliano, group chief executive officer
of corporate finance firm Investment Management, said the FMIS, at least
initially, has been implemented to support the government, effectively as an
in-house system for a more efficient management of the national budget and
financial management process.
“In the short term I would expect the FMIS to
have much more impact on the private sector, improving financial and management
information that can only enhance administrative processing and decision-making
in the public sector,” he said. “Unofficial payments to process tax returns are
outmoded, given the acceptance of file downloads of returns and now e-filing
and also the ease of tax payments directly through the banking system.”
Galliano said there is little reason to visit
tax branches anymore because the tax filing process is essentially automated.
“We don’t live in a perfect world. There are
still faults in the system, especially as pertains to the audit process and, at
times, its fairness. Generally, there
have been vast improvements made over the years and, compared with other Asean
developing markets, the taxation system in the Kingdom continues to make
significant productivity and service improvements and is progressively
attaining improved transparency and governance,” he said.
However, he said the common thread of dissatisfaction
presently is the scale of audits, both in their limits and comprehensiveness.
“In times of financial hardship, businesses are
seeking incentives to survive and not additional hardships that advance any
deterioration in the health of an enterprise,” he said. “While it is
understandable that the government is facing challenging times and required tax
collection levels are at risk, rather than punitive audits, implementing
additional taxes such as capital gains tax are an equitable alternative.”