The Revenue Department will waive fines and criminal liability for 40,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that registered for the single financial account programme but still understated their tax bills to encourage them to pay tax correctly.
The 40,000 interested SMEs must show their intention to participate in the fresh scheme by June, said director-general Ekniti Nitithanprapas.
The participating businesses will still be subject to unpaid tax bills and will be required to submit tax returns through the electronic filing system for at least one year.
Some 400,000 SME operators registered for the single financial account programme, but the Finance Ministry said 40,000 of them still used more than one account to understate income tax bills.
Mr Ekniti insisted that the new measure is different from one offered in 2016, when the Revenue Department exempted SMEs from backdated tax payments, as delinquent SME taxpayers are still required to pay unpaid tax.
The department signed a cooperation agreement on Thursday with four bodies -- the Bank of Thailand, the Federation of Accounting Professions, the Commerce Ministry's Business Development Department and the Joint Standing Committee on Commerce, Industry and Banking -- to encourage the use of a single financial account.
Under the single account scheme, the central bank also requires banks to consider only financial statements submitted to the Revenue Department when considering SME loans, starting from Jan 1, 2019.
Wajeetip Pongpech, assistant governor at the Bank of Thailand, said the central bank has backed commercial banks and specialised financial institutions launching incentives to encourage SMEs to produce financial statements in a transparent manner.
Apart from financial accounts submitted to the Revenue Department, financial institutions are permitted to take into account other factors like orders and business plans to evaluate debt-servicing ability, she said.
Vuttikrai Leewiraphan, director-general of the Business Development Department, said the department has linked the database of financial statements submitted by SMEs to the department with the Revenue Department to facilitate them in filing tax returns without the need to attach financial statements again.