Online tax system doubted by incredulous lawmakers

It's tax time again and the Ministry of Finance's efforts to push forward with the nation's new online tax-filing program appear to have paid off this year, said Vice Minister of Finance Wang Te-san (王得山) at the legislature yesterday.

"It's estimated that 900,000 tax returns will be filed through the Internet by the end of this month," Wang told lawmakers at the finance committee meeting.

The estimate may turn out to be wishful thinking since only 31,000 reports have been received since authorities began accepting tax filings May 1. The actual popularity remains to be seen as taxpayers often wait until the last week to file.

Lawmakers across party lines, however, raised concerns over the system's capability of safeguarding personal data against hackers.

PFP legislator Pang Chien-kuo (龐建國) first criticized the ministry for its hasty decision to implement the practice this year.

Pang said the finance ministry failed to consult with the Ministry of Justice before carrying out the new measure, adding that the ministry may have also violated the country's online personal-data-protection law by exposing taxpayers' income data on the Internet without acquiring their written consent beforehand.

Pang said the access to taxpayers' ID numbers and household numbers has become so easy that taxpayers' income figures and tax reports may be easily accessed by those with some technical knowledge.

Last month, the ministry had asked taxpayers, who intend to file tax reports via the Internet, to apply for an online identification at the government certification agency (GCA, 政府憑證管理中心) before retrieving their own income certificates and filing online tax reports this month. However, for those who failed to do so, the ministry also allows taxpayers to simply upload their tax reports via the Internet to the tax administration by keying in ID numbers and household numbers, while no income certificates will be automatically provided.

Lin Tseng-ji (林增吉), director-general of the ministry's taxation department, said the ministry's encryption software makes the system free of risk.

When asked by KMT lawmaker Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) whether citizens can apply for national compensation if their taxation details are compromised, Lin skirted the question by saying that hacking into the system would constitute a "criminal act."

An Internet expert said that the triple data encryption system (DES) being used by the ministry is highly advanced and secure.

"Even if the data is accessed by hackers, it will be garbled and unreadable. It's said that it would take 100 years to decode the data from the triple DES," said Joe Wu (吳明仲), marketing supervisor at Internet Security Solutions Co (鈺松國際).

Another KMT lawmaker, Lwo Shih-hsiung (羅世雄), criticized the ministry for ignoring user friendliness by employing software that is only compatible with the Microsoft operating system and not free systems such as Linux.

In response, Wang promised to review the first trial run later this year and come up with technological modifications to provide more convenience and safety.

PFP legislator Li Yong-ping (李永萍), also said that the tax administration's online services have been not answered taxpayers' questions, with online and phone inquiries going mostly unanswered.