By: Staff Writer
Colombo (LNW): Sri Lanka’s Inland Revenue Department one of the three state revenue collection agencies is till to recover the total arrears of taxes, penalties and interest due to the state tax office by December 31, 2022 as a result of using faulty RAMIS and Legacy systems is Rs. 904 billion, the Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) revealed .
The corrupted official front liners who were behind the introduction of the RAMIS system and played out tax payers money safeguarding billionaire businessmen are still spearheading treasury operations aiding and abetting corrupt practices , several IRD officials said.
It was disclosed that an amount of Rs. 163 billion has been identified as income that can be collected without any legal concern and that Rs. 740 billion has been identified as income that has been temporarily suspended due to certain reasons.
The Auditor General also pointed out that this amount has been identified as the total arrears of tax to be collected under both RAMIS and Legacy systems and there was a discussion at length about not collecting the revenue due that could be collected off this tax arrears.
COPA Chairman State Minister Lasantha Alagiyawanna, recommended that a report be given to COPA with dates containing information on how to collect the tax arrears identified as chargeable income which can be collected at least in installments.
The Chairman also recommended that a separate report should be given on the total outstanding tax amount of 904 billion rupees and the report should state in detail how taxes have been evaded and the reasons for such.
The Commission on Public Accounts (COPA) recently made several proposals regarding the Inland Revenue Department’s tax collection system.
According to COPA, the department’s Revenue Administration Management Information System, or RAMIS for short, currently doesn’t function properly. The proposals suggest that RAMIS would need to be updated properly in order to improve the IRD’s efficiency.
Back in 2014, the IRD under the Ministry of Finance, invested Rs 10 billion towards building RAMIS.
The idea was to modernize and improve the tax collection process. However, it’s now revealed that the system doesn’t operate as intended, despite the fact that “more money has already been spent to strengthen this system,” according to COPA Chairman.
The IRD officials’ claim that RAMIS would need to be updated following the 2017 Inland Revenue Act as RAMIS was implemented in 2014.
However, back in 2018, the IRD stated the system was being updated to include the 2017 act. The officials further mentioned that they are unable to provide contractual information as per the terms and conditions of the agreement with the company that built RAMIS, a Singaporean firm.
Further, since the agreement is technically between the two governments, “intervention of the
Prior to RAMIS, Sri Lanka’s taxation system was only partially automated and it was one riddled with issues, according to the then Senior Commissioner of Inland Revenue.
RAMIS was built as part of an agreement between Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Finance and NCS, a subsidiary of Singapore’s Singtel.
A customized version of Singapore’s own IRAS application, the arrangement also included “change management and transformation” training sessions for IRD staff as part of the implementation process.
