Ministry of Post and Telecommunications (MPTC)
and General Department of Taxation (GDT) said it is going to collect tax on
digital ads by foreign tech companies which are not registered in Cambodia.
The announcement came out after the meeting on
Thursday between Minister of Post and Telecommunications Chea Vandeth and Kong
Vibol, director General of General Department of Taxation. Both parties
discused the measures to collect tax on digital services provided by major tech
companies such as Netflix, Amazon, Alibaba, Facebook and Google, despite
gaining revenues from Cambodian users and being unregistered in Cambodia.
MPTC will further cooperate with GDT and the
Ministry of Economy and Finance to ensure prompt tax obligations by digital
services providers and telecoms operators, said Vandeth. He praised GDT for
their achievements through the commitments and responsibilities of the
leadership and officials.
“Cambodia and other countries continue to adopt
digital technologies to improve work efficiency,” Vandeth emphasized, adding
that the importance of critical information infrastructure (CII) protection is
a means to safeguard internet traffic and provide additional cybersecurity for
GDT’s existing IT infrastructure.
Kong Vibol has appreciated the achievements at
MPTC, particularly the minister’s concrete visions and objectives to develop
Cambodia’s IT, telecoms and post sectors, despite having been in charge for
only seven months.
Mr Vibol also expressed his support for MPTC’s
plan to create a Big Data hub to integrate and share information among
government institutions at both the national and subnational levels.
Both MPTC and GDT plan to implement bilateral
information exchange, share telecoms operators’ revenue data from the Data
Management Center (DMC), and to provide technical supports in enforcing tax
obligations using the upcoming National Internet Gateway (NIG).
Both parties will jointly draft regulations and
build technical capability to tax digital advertisements and services.