The Revenue Department is set to sell off assets seized for tax evasion in an effort to boost tax collection revenue in 2015.
Director-general Prasong Poontaneat said the department planned to speed up its tax collection process and sales of assets seized for tax evasion to boost tax revenue in fiscal 2015 by 10 billion baht.
For fiscal 2015, starting Oct 1, the tax collection target is set at 1.965 trillion baht, 14% higher than last year's target. During October and November, the first two months of the fiscal year, the amount of tax collected was 1.9 billion baht below target.
Mr Prasong said the amount of accumulated overdue taxes for the past several years amounted to more than 100 billion baht. Of the total were assets seized by the department including land, property and current assets such as antiques and amulets.
"The Revenue Department has put assets such as land up for auction but has not received much public attention. The reason is that, in some cases, local people do not dare to come to auctions as most land is owned by influential people in communities," he said.
Meanwhile, for fiscal 2013, the department sold assets worth several billion baht.
The Legal Execution Department has been requested to put assets seized by the Revenue Department up for auction. The Legal Execution Department has regularly put seized assets and property on auction.
The Revenue Department divides overdue debts into five categories: overdue tax cases pending court proceedings which hold statutory limitations of 10 years, cases with collateral that are in the court of appeal, and cases with collateral in which the court has reached a verdict and assets are confiscated.
The other two are cases with guarantors in which verdicts have been reached and are under debt instalments, and cases without guarantors and debts being written off such as value-added tax frauds whereby the department cannot claim assets.