At the recent launching of ‘MyIRC’ – the online payment portal for the Internal Revenue Commission (IRC), Commissioner General Sam Koim stated that the IRC has for too long, been a passive tax collector.
Commissioner Koim said, “When I took office two and a half years ago we had challenges at IRC. We had challenges of document management, data. And a lot of laborious manual work.”
He recalled encouraging IRC staff saying, “The first point of changing anything is to acknowledge that there is a problem. If we do not acknowledge that there exists a problem we will never change anything because that doesn’t cause you or give you the urgency to act.”
The Commissioner General highlighted the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic stating that despite the challenges brought about by the unforeseen pandemic, the IRC was instead propelled to identify weak areas and invest in technology like the recently launched MyIRC payment portal.
“So we set our vision to build the foundations of a robust, modern and efficient tax administration.”
Koim said IRC adopted three main pillars to be agile, data-driven and to invest into digitization.
“So all of these things, a couple of steps that we’ve taken so far is to make our work efficient, effective and ensure that taxpayers pay the right amount of tax with less burden and also with less administrative burden on our side.”
Koim emphasized on IRC’s main aim of tax collection stating that once tax filing is conducted online at home or offices by taxpayers, IRC can shift manual work including all necessary resources to conduct tax inspections.
“There are taxpayers out there that are not inspected and they are carrying on as if IRC will never come around.”
The IRC Commissioner General thanked the current Marape-led Government for allocating funds to the IRC to carry out what is necessary for tax collection and work efficiency.
IRC is in the final stage of procuring the Integrated Tax Administering System. The current system has caused frustration among many taxpayers and tax agents.
In addition, the government has also allocated K11 million to procure and establish a GMS system.
“GMS System is goods and services tax monitoring system where we will connect GST at the point of sale at Boroko Food World or anywhere you go. As soon as they press enter, the tax component is calculated and wired directly to IRC to be data that is needed,” said Koim.
“So these are the two investments that this government is making and we would like to fully utilize to increase the revenue next year.”
Prime Minister Marape encouraged heads of IRC and ICA saying, “Before our nation celebrates 50 years of Independence in 2025, all transactions in IRC and Customs should be transacted on digital platform(s).”