IOTA Secretariat
IOTA Forum on Communication “Building trust in tax administration”
On 11th-13th October 2022, after two years of virtual operation, IOTA has the pleasure of hosting the Forum on Communication in Budapest, Hungary. The hybrid event attracted more than 45 participants from 26 IOTA member countries gathering personally at the venue along with over 40 attendees joining online via MS Teams.
The Forum welcomed speakers from Azerbaijan, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom as well as brought together communication experts of IOTA member tax administrations from both EU and non-EU countries.
The theme of the Forum was “Building trust in tax administration” and focused on strategies and experiences on how IOTA member countries are trying to enhance trust internally, within their own tax employees, and externally among taxpayers, particularly young people.
Trust can be considered the fundamental element in any sort of communication both internal and external, even more after the pandemic. The current communication environment, in fact, is based more and more in technology, apps, social media and the element of trust and connection with employees as well as taxpayers is crucial.
The first day of the Forum was dedicated to the internal communication activities providing the participants with a great opportunity to discover more about how to enhance trust in tax administration among tax officials. This topic was addressed by the following presentations:
- Developing testable assumptions: translating research insights into actions to build trust presented by Lorrah Achato, United Kingdom
- Enhancing internal trust in IAPR presented by Panagiotis Ballas, Greece
- Trustworthy Communication with public - the path to success presented by Ulker Nabiyeva, Azerbaijan
- Belgian Employer Branding project: “This too is the Federal Public Service Finance” presented by Inge Mattens, Belgium
The second day of the event was focused on the external communications, highlighting the strategies to regain trust in tax administration among taxpayers. The following country presentations reflected on the topic:
- Spain: Trust-related initiatives towards taxpayers in the Spanish Tax Agency presented by Gema Jiménez Martín and Teresa Bernácer Sales
- Norway: Trust, detection risk and fairness: the role of communication style presented by Nina Serdarevic
- Italy: Communication to young people: challenges and opportunities presented by Alessandra Gambadoro
- Romania: Improving voluntary tax compliance through Nudging techniques in Romania presented by Mihaela Drăgulin
- Finland: "Happy Taxpayer campaign" presented by Katri Riekkinen
- Lithuania: Leadership communication not only for leaders? STI communication practices presented by Irma Juškaitė
- Sweden:The Swedish Tax Agency's transformation towards a trust based approach - strategy and experiences presented by Anders Stridh
The last plenary session was closed by Christopher Khadem, Head of External Communications of HM Revenue and Customs, who delivered a presentation on Building trust through compliance communication.
During the three days of the event, the participants were able to gain a more practical understanding and awareness of specific internal and external communication strategies, campaigns and initiatives related to increasing trust in tax administration.
The attendees of the Forum could raise questions during the Q&A at the end of each presentation. In addition, participants were actively involved in group discussions and a panel debate over the three days of the event. The presentations are now available for registered IOTA website users on the event’s webpage while the recording of the event will be provided soon.
