Commission planning to develop online tax calculator

THERE are plans to develop an online tax calculator for small-medium enterprises (SMEs) to calculate tax themselves instead of engaging accountants, according to the Internal Revenue Commission (IRC).
IRC acting commissioner-general Sam Koim explained plans to go into the digital space during the Start-Up PNG 2019 convention.
He said some tax administrations around the world were moving away from physical document-based auditing into Information Technology-based analytical approach.
“At some point in time, probably towards the end of the year or next year, we are looking at having a tax calculator attached to our websites,” he said.
“This is so SMEs and small people can actually do their calculations online themselves instead of looking for an accountant.
“We would also like to have chat boxes on our websites so that you can at least have built cognitive ability so that taxpayers can interact without calling our office, calling telephone lines that don’t exist anymore.
“These are some of the useful facilities that we would like to introduce.”
Koim said in the future, IRC would be profiling big tax payers.
This will help the tax administration track the financial performance of the company against their tax records.
“At the moment, the flow of real time data and information is not collected as it should be so we will be going into that space,” he said.