Excise Dept. should be digitalized to avoid major taxing malpractices: Harsha

Colombo, May 19 (Daily Mirror) - The tax earning mechanism of the Excise Department of Sri Lanka should be digitalized to avoid the major malpractices taking place when collecting tax revenue from leading liquor manufacturers, the economics expert Dr. Harsha de Silva said.

The department being one of the government’s three main tax revenue generating arms has to collect arrears of Rs.7 billion, which had been dodged by six leading liquor manufacturers in the country.

Samagi Jana Balawegaya Parliamentarian made these remarks addressing a panel discussion over the weekend and said the ‘human phase’ of the tax collecting mechanism should be removed to avoid malpractices.

“The Excise Department does not have a proper digital system for taxing and they still depend on traditional and conventional methods to do so. If the tax collecting mechanism was switched from human handling to digitalize system, the malpractices and exemptions on benefits could be avoided,” the MP said.

He said that they came across these issues when he was acting in the parliament select committees to probe the malpractices of the government departments.

“When I and MP Patali Champika were in parliament select committees, we summoned state officials in charge of the Excise Department and learnt about this problem. When we enquired about the security sticker on liquor bottles, we learnt that there was a massive fraud behind that,” MP de Silva said.

Meanwhile, MP Patali Champika Ranawaka who was in the same panel said the department revoked the license of six leading liquor companies for not paying taxes on time and then they quietly started to pay.