Modernizing the tax system through automation has helped increase revenue and transparency in the Kingdom’s tax sector.

The General Department of Taxation (GDT) said tax collection had increased by more than 28 per cent in the first 10 months of the year.

At the Fourth Tax 2019 forum held in Phnom Penh on Thursday, GDT director-general Kong Vibol said the department had successfully achieved modernisation in its IT management systems to ensure transparency in handling taxpayer data.

“I think we achieved a tax system that provides fast and accurate tax services. The E-filing programme stores data and automatically calculates submissions. There was previously money paid under the table to avoid taxes, but now we have this transparent system,” he said.

He said to increase revenue from the tax sector, the GDT will audit companies operating in Cambodia at least once a year, to assess company risk.

Vibol said the GDT found out that many companies had fake tax payment documents, but he did not reveal their names.

“We see that many companies still claim to be losing money while they were making money, so we have to do this [audit] work.

“We have a tax criminal investigation team. We have found that many companies falsified millions of dollars in tax revenue. They have tax invoices even though they did not declare taxes. Even some of our tax officials are involved with this,” lamented Vibol.

The government collected $2.4 billion in revenue from taxation during the first 10 months of this year – up 28.31 per cent year-on-year from $1.873 billion – a report from the GDT said on Monday.

The amount is equivalent to 105.06 per cent of the GDT’s revenue collection plan for this year. Last month, the GDT collected about $221.91 million in revenue, an increase of 21.85 per cent compared to the same period last year.

The EU delegation to Cambodia’s head of cooperation Franck Viault said at the forum that the EU provided around €2.5 million ($2.8 million) in grants to the European Chamber of Commerce this year to enhance the stable structure with the Cambodian government.

Currently, the EU companies operating in Cambodia comprises of about 400 businesses which are hiring 20,000 employees. These companies will contribute to the development of Cambodia.

“The EU has supported the Cambodian government on several projects to improve its services to the taxpayer and to administrate with transparency,” he said.

Over the last five years, the GDT has achieved tax revenue growth of 20 per cent per annum. Of the collected revenue, it was $1.06 billion in 2014, more than $1.3 billion in 2015, $1.5 billion in 2017, over $1.97 billion in 2018, and $2.19 billion in 2018.