The Revenue Department will tighten law enforcement by filing criminal complaints against those who use fake invoices to evade tax payment and accounting firms as accomplices.
Starting from Sept 1, the tax-collecting agency will file criminal charges against any operators who use even one forged tax invoice, said Prasong Poontaneat, director-general of the Revenue Department.
Although the Revenue Code's Section 37 stipulates the punishment for using forged tax invoices, the department has never filed criminal complaints against those who used fake invoices representing less than 75% of sales value.
The department has eased up on punishing those who use forged tax invoices in the past two decades, Mr Prasong said, but society's growing opposition to tax fraud is compelling officials to tighten law enforcement.
At present, those who use fake tax invoices are subject to a prison term of three months to seven years for each counterfeit tax invoice, up to a maximum of 20 years. They also face a fine of 2,000-200,000 baht.
There are 300,000 juristic entities using the services of accounting firms nationwide. Most of the former are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Despite the department launching a raft of measures to encourage SME operators to pay tax correctly, some have been found to understate income to dodge tax.
The department from time to time has announced busts of gangs that bought fake tax invoices and sold them to companies to understate corporate income tax bills. During 2014-15, 16 gangs selling fake VAT invoices and 4,700 buyers were caught.
The latest crackdown comes after the department fell short of its collection target by 80 billion baht for the first eight months to May, largely due to a steep decline in petroleum income tax. The shortfall made it likelier that the country's largest tax-collecting agency would miss its fiscal 2017 target.
In a related development, Mr Prasong said a mere 90,000 electronic capture data (EDC) terminals have been installed, and fears the department will know merchants' actual sales have been blamed for the slower-than-targeted installation.
Mr Prasong said merchants that fail to install the card-swiping terminals will be the main focus of the department's monitoring of tax payments.
The Finance Ministry recently granted approval to two banking consortiums to install an additional 557,055 swiping terminals for credit and debit cards under the e-payment scheme by next March to fulfil the government's goal of at least one EDC terminal in every shop. The EDC expansion is part of the national e-payment scheme to transform Thailand into a less cash-reliant society.