Page 10 - Tax Tribune

3. How IOTA has contributed to improve your tax administration?

IOTA is an excellent forum to share and exchange views and experiences among tax
officials of the European region. In this sense, I think that IOTA is unique and
different from the other organisations that work in the tax field in the region for two
main reasons: on the one hand, IOTA is the sole organisation encompassing almost
all European countries; on the other hand, tax officials of the several tax
administrations are given the opportunity to meet, share their expertise and learn
from the others about practical issues in a level playing field. Even if there are
different levels of development among the membership, the officials from the most
skilled tax administrations can always learn new things from the rest and make
contacts or create an informal network to continue the exchange of experience and
seek for support after the events. IOTA ensures that through its activities these
meetings are fruitful, and provide flexibility in the agenda, so that anyone having
something to say can do so and it does not intervene to influence the contents or to
address policy issues. It’s a friendly environment where all members are equals. In
the surveys we have conducted internally on satisfaction with IOTA events the
results have been outstanding.

If we take the transfer pricing events as an example, we can see that they are not
intended to explain how OECD guidelines have to be applied but rather to share the
practical problems encountered by the tax administrations in the daily work, how
they interpret these guidelines and the way they solve the problems arisen.

4. What is the biggest challenge your administration is facing today?

The biggest challenge for us is to make the most of the new information and
communication technologies to capture, process and use the information, with the
aim to enhance the promotion of voluntary compliance through information and
assistance services to taxpayers and the fight against tax and customs fraud.

New IT simplify citizens´ tax liabilities since they allow them to reduce the
administrative burden, speed up formalities, minimise errors, facilitate the access to
information, avoid travelling to offices and adapt to the different taxpayers´ profiles,
thus promoting voluntary compliance.

Moreover, they contribute to maximising the efficiency of control actions which is
very important in a globalised, changing and technologised economic environment. It
is of particular interest the exploitation of the possibilities offered by ‘Big Data’ to
tax administrations to capture and treat information coming from tax relevant
operations in real time, so that we can react swiftly against fraudulent activities. The

10