The Revenue Department issued a warning to independent business owners, particularly online vendors and influencers, to file their taxes correctly, insisting the department can leverage IT systems to monitor their tax compliance.
According to director-general Pinsai Suraswadi, with the first three months of the year allotted for filing personal income tax returns, income earners are urged to file returns, especially those with non-salary income or independent business owners, such as traders and online sellers.
Mr Pinsai said anyone earning income should file a tax return as failure to do so will result in fines and additional charges as prescribed by law.
He said the department uses IT systems to identify those who fail to file their tax returns on time. Non-compliance leads to penalties, including a fine of twice the tax liability plus monthly interest of 1.5%.
Intentional submission of false documents or using fake tax invoices carries criminal penalties.
Roughly 11 million people are registered in the tax system, of which 4 million have tax liabilities. The rest either owe no tax or receive refunds.
The department aims to expand the personal income tax base by monitoring income earners who are not yet in the tax system.
For the first three months of fiscal 2025, Mr Pinsai said revenue collection totalled 470 billion baht, surpassing the target by 3.9 billion. This was attributed to a 12% improvement in domestic value-added tax (VAT) collection year-on-year.
Based on this performance, the department expects to meet its revenue target for the first half of the fiscal year, which ends in April.
However, he acknowledged challenges remain for the second half of the fiscal year, especially corporate income tax filings for the first half of the fiscal year, as during this period the economy did not expand significantly, which may impact business revenues and tax payments.
The department's revenue collection target for fiscal 2025 is 2.37 trillion baht, a 5% increase from the previous fiscal year.
The department is committed to achieving this target, said Mr Pinsai.
In a related development, Mr Pinsai said this year the Comptroller-General's Department is collaborating with the Revenue Department to integrate income and withholding tax data for government officials, permanent employees and pensioners.
The goal is to streamline personal income tax forms for the 2024 tax year.
These individuals can access their income and withholding tax data on the D-MyTax system, review it, and confirm the information before filing their returns via the Revenue Department's e-filing system.
Patricia Mongkhonvanit, director-general of the Comptroller-General's Department, said the data-sharing process is divided into two phases.
In the first phase, income and withholding tax data for 900,000 pensioners will be linked.
Previously pensioners had to wait for withholding tax certificates from their original agencies or the Comptroller-General's Department, or they could download them from the pension system.
These documents were then manually entered into the e-filing system, which could lead to errors.
Now the Comptroller-General's Department directly provides this data to the Revenue Department, integrating it into the D-MyTax system.
Pensioners can verify their information starting from next Monday.
For the second phase, the data of 1.3 million civil servants and permanent employees is linked. Government agencies need to process and submit the data to the Comptroller-General's Department for collection, after which it is sent to the Revenue Department.
The first batch of data on civil servants and permanent employees is expected to be sent to the Revenue Department in early February, with the second batch likely in early March.