The IOTA New Year got off to a good start with the workshop on collecting information from the web which was held in Budapest, Hungary. Delegates from 23 countries met to discuss issues and to exchange ideas on how best to acquire and use information about taxpayers from the Internet.

Many businesses have moved from the traditional high-street environment to that of the Internet and tax administrations are now faced with the problem of identifying individuals or companies that use the website to advertise or trade and who fail to disclose their true income.

Not all information is instantly visible through traditional search engines and to gain a true understanding of trading patterns or sources of income tax administrations need to be able to explore the “deep web” to gather evidence of business activities. To address this problem they have had to devise new strategies, revise legislation, set up specialist teams and acquire and learn to use new tools.

The event brought together 37 delegates who spent their time examining the issues posed by this technology and ways they have developed to solve the problems. During a series of presentations and discussion groups they looked at the inherent risks the website posed to tax administrations, ways of identify taxpayers who used the website to trade, methods of acquiring and examining data and the tools and techniques available to them to carry out these processes.

This was the first time that so many tax administrations had been given the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas and concerns on this topic and it was decided that there was a continued benefit in setting up an IOTA web-forum for the delegates so they could continue their discussions. Other tax administrations wishing to join the forum should contact the IOTA Technical Advisory Commitee.