By 2012, Taiwan will be the first country in Asia to use a fully automated national taxation system, which is expected to save taxpayers hundreds of millions in operational costs, IBM Taiwan Corp said yesterday.
“It will also reduce social costs directly and indirectly associated with tax collection by NT$602 million [US$18 million],” Paul Liu (劉鏡清), executive of IBM Taiwan’s global business services, told a media briefing.
The system is known as the Smart Taxation Service System.
Acting as the nation’s adviser, IBM assisted in consolidating various local government agencies, such as Ministry of Finance’s national tax administration, the Ministry of Education and various District Courts, to provide a single window for taxpayers.
Yesterday, the Ministry of Finance’s financial data center (FDC) completed the first phase of the Taxation Information System Integration and Re-engineering Project, which was launched in 2007. Official bidding for the project will begin at the end of this year, IBM said.
The project imitates the electronic tax filing model implemented by the US Internal Revenue Service and is expected to increase local tax filing productivity by 20 percent within three years of its introduction.
In addition to general-income tax filing, the FDC will also provide e-tax filing and online payment services, saving taxpayers associated transportation and time equivalent to savings of NT$213 million per year, IBM data showed.
By enabling interagency collaboration, seamless data transmission among various public and private channels could reduce tax processing costs by NT$179 million and interagency coordination costs by NT$2.38 billion, Liu said.
Furthermore, the project team will conduct a comprehensive analysis to streamline and automate the taxation process, reduce the amount of tax audits required and improve the quality of the tax examination process.
Risk management measures will include automated alerts to trigger suspicious filings or tax evasion.
Another likely advantage of the Smart Taxation Service is the substantial savings in information technology (IT) hardware under a centralized taxation information platform and database.
“This will accelerate decision-making, lower system installation and maintenance costs, and strengthen information security. This in turn will lower electricity consumption at the FDC’s data center by 40 percent,” Liu said.
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