Dept focuses on addressing compliance issues

The government needs to look at moving into automated tax returns to address compliance issues, Treasury Secretary Dairi Vele says.
Vele told The National that compliance was a big concern and part of the strategy in terms of tax and non-tax would be to focus on addressing this.
“All our efforts this year and of the next successive years must to make sure that everyone who should be paying tax is paying tax,” Vele said.
He said the department was excited about working with deputy prime minister and Treasurer Charles Abel.
“Abel has been advocating strongly and part of the strategy would be the new things we can do,” Vele said.
“There’s a lot of kina that can be achieved just by doing some basic things around increased compliance. We’ve got such a small workforce that we do turn to over burn and in our simple minds, like census people walking around and making sure that they are marrying the business registration with tax file numbers, so if you have a business and you are paying tax then you are captured in that system.
“There’s a couple of strategies that we should look at employing, door to door is one but making sure that the computer systems work, very much like the National Identity system. If we are supposed to be paying tax that is captured in your NID cards, the Treasury, Finance, Internal Revenue Commission and PNG Customs know where you are and can make sure that they get that piece of tax that you owe that you owe.