The Revenue Department is using artificial intelligence (AI) to examine tax payments, enabling deeper scrutiny and preventing tax evasion, says director-general Lavaron Sangsnit.
He said the department is testing the use of AI in a sandbox to support its tax examination work.
Mr Lavaron said as social media plays a key role in personal communications and trade, AI can check what social media users post on the network about their trading activities.
The department offers an e-tax system for the convenience of tax- payers.
The system includes an e-filing channel for tax forms, the My Tax Account platform for taxpayers to see their tax information, an e-withholding tax channel, as well as e-tax invoice and e-receipt channels.
The department is continually upgrading its e-tax system to encourage more taxpayers to use the service, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.
He said the e-tax system shortened tax return processing from around one month to seven days.
A department source who requested anonymity said the department randomly checks information on social media such as Facebook where users display evidence of money transfers, or live-streams of merchants that promote products.
The goal is to analyse whether they are paying tax on their income, said the source.
The department also gathers information from websites, such as e-commerce sites, and analyses the data to ascertain tax payments.
The department analyses taxpayers' revenue based on information sent to it by financial institutions, according the relevant laws.
The law requires financial institutions to provide the department with information on deposit accounts with more than 3,000 deposits per year, or deposit accounts with more than 400 deposits per year and a total value of more than 2 million baht.