Bt60 billion tax returned to people, companies to help cope with Covid-19

“When these tax returns and other measures the department has employed to help alleviate people’s financial burden during the outbreak are added up, we have effectively injected over Bt100 billion into the economic system,” he added.
Ekniti said that in the past two years, the number of people submitting their tax returns online had increased continually. “Digital technologies have greatly helped increase the efficiency of tax collection, both in terms of speed and comprehensiveness,” he said.
“The Revenue Department has developed tax collection technologies under its digital transformation initiatives such as using open API [application programming interface] to create online tax filing platform called iTax. This integrates the user’s tax account with social security and pension funds, e-donation, tax refund via Prompt Pay, e-tax invoice, e-stamp and e-withholding tax.”
Ekniti added that the department had received a tax exemption proposal from entrepreneurs of money exchange businesses who have been affected by the Covid-19 situation.
“In practice, it is nearly impossible to exempt tax for one particular business as it will create impartiality to other related businesses,” he said. “However, the department will discuss with the Fiscal Policy Office possible measures to help the operators of certain businesses during the outbreak.”
The department also reported tax collection in the past eight months of fiscal year 2020 (October 2019 to May 2020) as below the target by Bt139 billion, or 11.4 per cent.