Soon-to-be-adopted electronic excise tax stamps for tobacco, alcohol and playing cards are expected to stem tax evasion and boost revenue by 10%, says the head of the Excise Department.
The department is preparing to replace paper excise tax stamps with electronic versions, in which QR codes are embedded, and improve the efficiency of tax collection for tobacco, alcohol and playing cards, said director-general Somchai Pulsawas.
The department has yet to give the time frame for the adoption of the new system.
At present, only tobacco, alcohol and playing cards are labelled with paper excise tax stamps. The possibility that such paper stamps can be falsified or illegally reused is high and it is difficult to control such illegal practices, he said.
Each year, around 3 billion paper excise tax stamps are used.
The Excise Department collected 62.4 billion baht from alcohol, 62.7 billion baht from tobacco, and several million baht from playing cards in fiscal 2015.
The department contributed 16% of the 2.62 trillion baht tax revenue in the last fiscal year, while the Revenue Department and the Customs Department together accounted for the lion's share.
Mr Somchai said the Excise Department planned to reduce the types of excise duty stamps to two from around 100 at the moment.
The new stamps with a blue colour indicate that products are domestically produced, while red ones indicate imported products, said Mr Somchai, adding that other details of products and manufacturers will be contained in the embedded QR codes.
The Excise Department recently estimated its tax revenue collection would exceed the 496-billion-baht target by 18 billion baht this fiscal year after collection in the first six months surpassed the target by 9 billion baht.
For the six months to March, the tax-collecting agency gathered 258 billion baht, surpassing the target by 8.93 billion baht and surging 34.7 billion baht over the same period last year.
The department raked in 46.8 billion baht in March alone, eclipsing the target by 3.57 billion baht or 7.63%, up by 3.32 billion baht from the same period last year.