Commission working on its medium-term revenue strategy

The Internal Revenue Commission (IRC) plans to continue work under its five-year medium-term revenue strategy to look at administration and legislative reforms.
Commissioner of tax Dr Alois Daton said one of the big thing for this year was to continue with the work on Tax Administration Act, which lawyers and an adviser were assisting with.
He is hoping for it to be completed next year.
“We are also going to progress further work on the standard government integrated tax administration system (Sigtas),” Daton said.
Sigtas is a new revenue accounting system which has been installed in many countries around the world.
“We are getting assistance from our donor partners to also look at reviewing our legislation, looking at our debt portfolio and continue looking at our strategies for revenue-raising and our compliance work,” Daton said.
He said some of their five-year plans were captured in the medium-term revenue strategy road map which was implemented last year and would continue this year.
Daton said some of their plans which were not achieved last year were pushed forward to this year.
“Some of the major changes that everyone is waiting for is the increase in the tax-free threshold and the tier threshold for marginal income tax for individuals,” he said.
“The legislative change reduces income tax burden on every individuals in Papua New Guinea.”
Daton said from Jan 1, supplies to resource companies would no longer be zero-rated and were subjected to the full 10 per cent goods and services tax rate.
This is except for supplies made to companies that have signed a fiscal stability clause with the Government.
Daton said the public could visit the IRC website or visit the office in person to know more about legislative changes made to tax administration tax in the country in this year’s budget.