Former taxman and current Governor for Oro Gary Juffa has called on the Government to take an aggressive stance on tax evasion rather than penalizing the people.
He said the government is unfair in its ability to collect taxes due to the State from tax evaders.
Juffa stated that it is no secret that many companies operating in the fisheries and forestry sectors, and expatriates who owned properties earning profits from rentals were not paying taxes.
He added that the IRC was taking a timid approach towards tax evaders including transnational criminal syndicates and aggressively pursuing compliant entities and wage earners.
Juffa further reiterated that most tax organizations in the region and the world were intelligence driven and relentlessly and aggressively pursued tax evaders.
However, he said in PNG, the IRC was expecting taxpayers to voluntarily turn up and pay their taxes and then penalise them for it.
He said the IRC had no intelligence capacity and its enforcement mechanisms were weak and virtually useless.
Juffa emphasized that joint operations between the Customs Services and IRC would net substantial revenues if funded and managed properly.
He said another weak agency was the Investment Promotion Authority is also failing to ensure companies operating in PNG were compliant with the laws governing their activities and did not enforce their laws at all and had no intelligence capacity.