Social Media And Tax Administration -Isaac Amuire.

One of the best moments the 21st century has bequeathed to the world undoubtedly is the times we are in now, beginning with the invention of interactive media of communication namely: facebook, twitter, youtube and the likes.

Business and social communications have never enjoyed the degree of flexibility the social media offer today. Perhaps its greatest strength lies in the unscripted language that people use in communicating on these platforms.

Though the newspaper, radio and television revolutionized businesses, social and other forms of communication in their early years, social media have taken social and economic transactions to new heights never imagined in the late eighteen/early nineteen centuries when man replaced the manual way of production and distribution with the use of machines.

With facebook, millions of friends and relatives who for years were out of touch, have reconnected, businesses across the globe now make brisk sales on these social media, and the one action that bridged the age gap between president Goodluck Jonathan and Nigerians was the opening of a facebook account.

That action endeared him to millions of Nigerians who saw him as a departure from the old school of leaders. Beyond the social appeal of social media however, countries across the globe are deploying this IT genre to very serious sectors like governance, tax administration and the likes.

Voluntary compliance, which is the desire of most tax administrators can be achieved with ease, if efforts are made by tax officials to secure the friendship of a taxpayer on a platform like facebook.
There, all the questions the taxpayer wants answers to can be adequately answered by the tax officer.

Nelson Gutierrez, in his article entitled  ‘Information Technology In Support Of The Tax Administration Functions And Taxpayer Assistance’  said, “The new technologies reduce processing times and production cycles, permit rapid adjustments in the procedures, grant greater flexibility, which translates into increase in effectiveness.

The impact of the new technologies in the tax administrations, is a consequence of their employment on a worldwide basis. Their rapid expansion, growth and increasingly lower cost, permits us to achieve clear advantages to  improve our administrative processes.”

Explaining the attendant gains of using ICT in this sector, he adds, “Now we can offer services which were not feasible before. We can locate our offices to attend the taxpayer in any part of the world in which a PC connected with Internet exists. Our services can be available to anyone, without requiring physical presence in any of our geographical offices.

Taxpayers can file returns or make their payments from their homes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and our operating costs to provide this service, are minimal compared with the traditional operating schemes.

Technology allows us increasingly to know more details of each taxpayer and administrate this information to be able to offer personalized services and specific specialized controls.

The quality of the information of the transactions carried out by the taxpayers with the tax administration improves significantly.
Not only can we capture the data from the source that generates them, but we can offer the programs that allows them to generate the data, prepare their returns, settle their taxes and in general allows them to comply with their tax obligations.

We can also increase the means to receive mass information from taxpayers and information agents, reducing significantly the time for processing and availability of that information. Many of the controls that were applied traditionally through massive subsequent procedures can now be applied interactively on line.

It is now easier to capture more and better information from the external environment in which our administrations interact. The possibility of capturing internal information also grows.

In addition to the obvious advantages related with the contact with taxpayers, internally the benefits are very important. In the first instance, we can have direct contact, on line and interactive with all our branches and employees. The aspects of releasing information to employees at all levels is simplified by publicizing the information in our internal portal or the simple use of e-mail.”

Counting the gains of ICT in tax administration, the Indian Finance Minister P.Chidambaram was quoted as saying recently that  “there is need to move towards a technology driven tax administration” and called on all assesses to file tax returns.

“We will have to get each one of the 28 lakh tax deductees (under TDS). The tax amount would be credited to the government and refund would be credited to the deductee. And this can be done only if we move to technology,” Mr. Chidambaram said. A technology-driven tax administration would assist the tax deductor, tax collector and also the payee, he said, adding it will help all the three get linked to each other without being manually involved in the process,” he added.

However, the social media add human face to online communication and if well managed in tax administration can create the friendly environment which eliminates suspicion of the motive of tax administrators, which makes voluntary tax payment impossible. 

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