During a meeting chaired by Finance Minister Apisak Tantivorawong on Monday (Feb 8), the Revenue, Excise and Customs departments were instructed jointly to install a system that will connect their tax databases, finance permanent secretary Somchai Sujjapongse said.
Installation must be completed within the next six months.
The joint tax database is one part of the Finance Ministry’s plan to prevent individuals and legal entities from understating or avoiding tax payments.
The ministry will also introduce a single financial accounting system and a national e-payment system, the latter of which will be linked with the Revenue Department’s tax database to make tax collection more efficient and boost government revenue.
The department said small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with annual sales of no more than B500 million had until March 15 to register in order to show their intention of using a single financial account.
Those SMEs that have registered by the deadline will be shielded from retroactive scrutiny.
Registered SMEs with capital not exceeding B5 million and revenue of B30 million or less for the 2015 accounting year will have no tax burden for the 2016 accounting year, a 10% corporate tax rate for net profits over B300,000 for the 2017 accounting year and tax exemption for net profits of no more than B150,000.
They will resume paying normal tax rates from 2018.
SMEs are currently exempt from paying corporate taxes on net profits of no more than B300,000 but pay a 15% tax for net profits of B300,0001 to B3 million and 20% for net profit of more than B3 million.
Mr Somchai also said the Finance Ministry would compel its officials who owed the Student Loan Fund (SLF) to pay off their debts as part of its anti-corruption drive.
At present, 60,000 state officials have failed to repay their loans to the SLF.
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