Questions/Answers

Besides tax collection, the Revenue Department is responsible for setting tax measures as a tool to promote economic and social policies, by providing tax incentives for donations to incentivize people to contribute to education, public health, religious and social upbringing. Each year there are approximately 1.2 million donors who use tax deduction from donations. Donors are required to collect paper evidence, such as a donation certificate, in order to show to the authorities the right to exercise tax deduction, then the officer will examine the paper evidence and verify its accuracy from the receipt. However, in most cases, reviewing donation receipt takes time and tax refund is often delayed due to loss evidence. There are also challenges regarding transparency of money donated to donation units. In some cases, donations are used as a mean to conduct financial crime, for example, creating false evidence of donations for tax evasion. With this respect, e-Donation has been designed and developed to solve the problem of taxpayers who want to use tax benefits by linking donation data directly to the Revenue Department. Donors no longer have to keep donations evidence and receive tax refunds faster. Hence it encourages more people to donate, allowing the public charities to access financial resources for social development in various fields. During Covid-19 epidemic crisis, the e-Donation program has contributed to the mobilization of donations to provide medical equipment. Moreover, e-Donation program provides transparency for the country's donation system to be traceable as donors can check amount online and the information is electronically linked to the Revenue Department database. It is another way to help reduce economic crime. Overall, e-Donation significantly helps reduce the time spent in investigation and the amount of paper resources used in issuing evidence of donation.

e-Donation focuses on improving transparency in receiving donations including fostering cooperation and harmonization between government agencies and all sectors. The project has adopted modern technology to create transparency for donations with target groups aimed at promoting change, namely with various government agencies whether it is the Revenue Department or government agencies that are responsible for supervising donations such as the Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Education, Department of Religion, etc. These agencies need to cooperate to adopt the new working process and work together to drive this project.

e-Donation is aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically, goal 10 “Reduced Inequalities” and Goal 16 “Peace Justice and Strong Institutions”. By bringing technology or innovation to the management of tax system, e-Donation is the implementation of fiscal policy which helps promote donations to public activities, provide access to utilities, education and public health systems for low-income, disadvantaged people. On the one hand, this project is considered one of the tools for reducing inequality in society and the economy. e-Donation can ensure the correctness and completeness of auditing donor’s tax benefits. It helps reduce corruption by creating transparency for the country's tax and donation system.

To sustainably support the e-Donation system, new legislations of tax measures for donations currently require taxpayers to donate through e-Donation only such as tax measures for education, sports, the Red Cross, etc. In addition, the scope of donation units under e-Donation system has been expanded to cover wider range of donation units. All sectors benefit from this scheme including donors, donation units, bank and etc. Therefore, there are more than 70,722 e-Donation units who implement e-Donation, accounting for 94% of all donation units. With the continuous expansion of the donation units and donors, e-Donation will be truly sustainable.

Originally, paper evidence was used as a proof of donation. Therefore, taxpayers may use fake proof of donations that are not actually donated or show the amount of donation more than the actual donation. e-Donation can solve the above problem by keeping a record of donation, whether it is donation through the donation units directly or through commercial banks. The donors can use tax benefits without having to submit paper evidence of donations to the staff. By linking donation information between government, and financial institution system, it can create transparency in donations management and supervision of donation units. However, donation units must be listed in the Revenue Department database (Whitelist), so the Revenue Department can ensure that donors will receive tax benefits. e-Donation also reduces staff workload and enhancing the level of government service.

e-Donation is designed to provide services to donation units such as educational institutions, religious institutions, nursing homes and public charities. However, there are more than 250 charities nationwide that support women and girls using e-Donation such as the Foundation for the Promotion of Women and Youth Welfare, Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women,etc. Therefore, those donations will be used to help reduce gender inequality and fosters gender equality among children and women who may have been inaccessible to resources and opportunities for education or medical care in women-specific diseases. e-Donation also increases access to funding sources.

The target group of the e-Donation system can be divided into 3 groups: 1. Donors: e-Donation eliminates the paper donations receipts and reduces time to find donation evidences and deliver to the tax authorities since the donors and staff can check information online. Gathering donation evidence for tax return submission is reduced from 1 hour/submission to 0 minutes. e-Donation also encouraged people to participate in supporting education, public health and religion. People can donate and use services at any time. 2. Donation Units: e-Donation reduces the time for preparing evidence of donation and searching for copies of evidence as follows: (1) Preparation of original evidence of donation 20 minutes: per 1 item reduced to 1 minute per 1 item (2) Searching for a copy of evidence for crosschecking: 2 hours per 1 item reduced to 0 minutes per 1 item. The e-Donation system provides incentives for donors to donate more to take advantage of the tax incentive. Coupled with a quick and easy method to increase access to funding sources. 3. Revenue Department staff: e-Donation helps reduce the paper review and shorten the operation time. In other word, the efficiency is increased significantly while the accuracy and transparency also improved.

2017: The Revenue Department has started to study and analyze data on the use of tax deductions from donations. At the beginning, the system had 4 functional functions: (1) Checking the donation unit information (2) Requesting a donation unit identification number (3) Recording donation information and (4) Viewing donation reports. The e-Donation system was launched on December 16, 2017 with 40 prototype donation units operating the system. 2018: With the rapidly evolving technology such as Internet Banking, QR Code, Barcode, the Revenue Department has therefore designed another channel to support donation information via bank transfer. When donors donate through QR Code, the commercial bank is responsible for sending donation information automatically to the Revenue Department instead of donation units. The Revenue Department has cooperated with the Bank of Thailand, the commercial bank, National Interbank Transaction Management and Exchange. New channel was launched on July 23, 2018. In 2020, the Revenue Department continues to develop the system and continuously promote e-Donation system. There are more types of donation units with more than 70,722 e-Donation agencies nationwide, accounting for 94% of all donation units.

The e-Donation is a new type of donation system that has never existed before in Thailand. Donation units and donors still did not understand and were used to the traditional donation model. Some also misunderstood that the Revenue Department wanted to use a system to monitor and collect tax on donations, so people were afraid of e-Donation. To solve the problem, the Revenue Department has assigned staffs in all areas to help and service donation units and donors. Staff also responsible for building cooperation with other governing agencies to promote continuous use of the system.

Donation has long been a popular and widespread activity in Thailand since it is the basic concept of Buddhism. Traditionally, donors can use tax deduction if only they have a paper proof of donation. Unlike paper evidence, e-Donation electronically stores information online. In addition, the Revenue Department has also collaborated with commercial banks to link the donation data via QR Code. By using e-Donation, staffs and taxpayers can check the donation information online through the Revenue Department website any time. Taxpayers also get tax refund faster as it eliminates the audit process by the staff.

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e-Donation uses an Application Programming Interface (API) to link data from the National Taxpayer Identification Number (NID) system so that officers can correctly verify information of donation units and donors. Also, taxpayer’s information is linked to “My Tax Account” in the Revenue Department database. “My Tax Account” is developed to pre-fill the income tax return to taxpayers in the future. Currently, it has been piloted with the Revenue Department staff in 2020.

Concept from the e-Donation system started with the use of electronic information to utilize tax benefits. The Revenue Department has applied this concept to various types of deductions, including health insurance and will extend to other types of deductions such as life insurance, bank interest, social security, investment information, etc. Taxpayers can take advantage of tax deductions without having to collect paper evidence. In addition, these data can be integrated with other electronic payment information, the benefits or welfare of government agencies. Thus, government agencies are able to effectively allocate welfare that is suitable for each target groups. e-Donation system is used in different contexts according to the organization's objectives. Hospitals or public charities that operate in public health, such as the Thai Red Cross Society have adopted e-Donation systems to accept donations for purchasing medical equipment and medical expenses for patients. Schools in the remote area have adopted the e-Donation system to receive donations in order to raise funds to fund scholarships for disadvantaged students. Moreover, the e-Donation system could be a model for tax incentives in other countries around the world.

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The key resources used in the development of e-Donation are human resources and budget. The e-Donation system is developed based on staff knowledge. The Revenue Department officers from tax policy division are responsible for policy setting and structural design of donation system. IT department staff is responsible for developing technical systems, maintaining database, security and linking information with other agencies. For budget, the project was supported by the government which has total operating expenses of 349,690 baht which could be divided into staff's salary (256,670 baht) and the budget of public relations (93,020 baht).

Government policy is an important factor that contributes to sustainable development of e-Donation. With the promotion of the digital government policy, National e-Payment Project and Thailand 4.0 policy, these policies aim to drive the economy by innovation and technology. Consequently, there is an internet network service covering all areas in the country with low service charges and free WIFI. These factors allow people to easily use e-Donation. Modern financial technologies such as mobile banking QR Code e-Wallet also help support e-Donation to continue to evolve in response to the needs and usage of people in the digital age.

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The Comptroller General's Department, who is responsible for the project transforming local units in Ministry of Finance, wants to promote the benefits and importance of using the electronic donation system to provide greater transparency in the country's donations. Therefore, during the fiscal year 2019, they had set indicators for the executives of the Ministry of Finance in 2 areas: 1. Public relations to increase knowledge and understanding of e-Donation 2. Increasing the number of donation units entering the system.

Two indicators in the selection criteria for the outstanding fellowships for the year 2019 are: 1. The level of e-Donation public relations success classified by activity level (process) Each province had established a publicity plan for donation units and donors in order to promote the benefits of using the system. Every province must have public relations activities to cover all target groups by the year 2019. 2. e-Donation project expansion to the local level: Requiring provincial finance executives to promote and invite more than 91 local donation units or more than 25% of the local donation units to use the system.

From the evaluation of e-Donation performance, more than 75,000 donation units nationwide are currently able to participate in e-Donation system. In 2017, during the initial phase, there were 40 pilot units of donation units, which later the Revenue Department had cooperated with related agencies, namely the Ministry of Education, Bureau of Buddhism, Department of Religious Affairs, Ministry of Public Health in promoting the understanding to the donation units and donors. According to the evaluation criteria for the outstanding provincial finance management team during the fiscal year 2019, the Revenue Department has created cooperation with other agencies that are departments under the Ministry of Finance, such as the Comptroller General's Department, the Excise Department, the Customs Department and the banks under the Ministry of Finance, etc. This has resulted in 51,276 donation units entering the system or 28,870 units increased from 2018. As a result, there are currently 70,722 donation units using the e-Donation system, accounting for 94% of donation units. However, some of them still lack of understanding or exposure to modern technology so this is another challenge for the Revenue Department to encourage more donors and donation units to use the e-Donation.

The Revenue Department has created a network of cooperation with ministries and government agencies that oversee various donation units. The Revenue Department’s executives had a meeting with the executives of agencies such as the Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Education, Bureau of Buddhism and Ministry of Tourism and Sports, financial institutions, government and private sectors. The purpose is to expand the scope of service and build knowledge and understanding about the e-Donation system and operate using proactive publicity as well as to promote the use of the e-Donation system to cover all types of donation units and to increase the number of users throughout the country sustainably.

The development of the e-Donation system occurred through collaboration and integrative work in many sectors. The process of participation of the stakeholders started from public hearing to develop the system to the process of public relations. The Revenue Department has received cooperation from stakeholders such as religious leadership association, monks, schools, foundations, and hospitals. The Revenue Department has listened to their opinions in order to improve the law and develop work process in accordance with the needs of the user as much as possible. The issuances of an approved e-Donation system were developed so that donors can print a document to keep if they wish. In addition, the development of receiving donations through commercial banks is created to correspond the need of customers’ lifestyle. The Revenue Department has received great cooperation from the private sector in formulating guidelines for receiving-sending information and driving the project. For departments in the region of the Revenue Department such as the Regional Revenue Office Area Revenue Office, the staffs were in close coordination with the local donation agency supervisory authority to thoroughly advise the donation units.

e-Donation has been successful in encouraging donation units and donors to transform their donation model. It reduces the use of paper resources, shorten the processing time and increase the efficiency of tax benefits. e-donation has received a lot of positive feedback since it reforms the donation system by bringing the technology to help create transparency in donations, enhance the service level of the Revenue Department. Furthermore, it increases the options for donors and donation units. e-Donation also can be considered as a model for linking information from external agencies for tax deductions. The Revenue Department has used this model to link information for other tax benefits such as health insurance deductions and is working on expanding the results to link all tax deductions items. In the future, all donations will be linked and automatically placed on income tax returns of taxpayers, thus making the filing of the return and the use of taxpayers' tax benefits more convenient.