The taxman is looking at bank accounts with high turnovers to detect cases susceptible to tax evasion, said an official with the Iranian National Tax Administration.
“The Central Bank of Iran has allowed INTA for three years to look into the big bank accounts with turnover of more than 50 billion rials,” Tasnim News Agency quoted Hadi Khani as saying.
Speaking at a prime time TV program late Tuesday, Khani said INTA is authorized to check suspicious bank accounts.
“We investigate accounts that are suspicious or susceptible to tax evasion,” he said, adding that tax collectors focus on three categories of banking transactions.
The first group is those who do not cooperate with the taxman and do not play by the tax rules.
The second group is about those whose misdeeds and flaunting of rules are verifiable in their commercial records, such as bank accounts, commercial cards and fake and forged invoices.
Finally, INTA is keen on looking deeper into bank transactions of people who are known to be involved in corruption cases.
“We examine data about these people to see whether they have any tax records, and if so, we check whether or not they have paid tax in proportion to their financial turnover,” Khani said.
Last month, INTA said its officers had identified and collected unpaid taxes to the tune of 184 trillion rials ($1.5 billion) in the last fiscal year the ended in March.
Of this amount, 147 trillion rials ($1.2 billion) was discovered by monitoring suspicious transactions
Earlier in May, the Central Bank of Iran sent a directive to banks and credit institutions obliging them to report the transactions of taxpayers to INTA on a monthly basis.
Promoting Transparency
The rule, enshrined in the current budget (March 2019-20), seeks to help promote transparency in the lethargic banking industry, alleviate money laundering and curb tax evasion.
As per law, on INTA’s request banks and credit institutions are obliged to provide data about bank accounts and transactions (both interbank and intra-bank) of tax payers. In addition, law allows the CBI to freeze the bank accounts of those lacking a national ID number.
Khani underscored the point that by digging into suspicious bank transactions, INTA indeed looks beyond incomes, strives to bring order to the dysfunctional economic system and curb speculative activities.
Khani spoke about one INTA plan to launch a smart tax collection system to reduce arbitrariness of the taxman when assessing payable tax.
He sought to reassure the people that in cracking down on tax evaders, INTA plays by the rule of law. Everything else is irrelevant, namely the “social and political weight” of tax dodgers.
However, he concurred that some organizations refuse to cooperate with INTA in identifying the fat cats.
The senior taxman estimated the value of unpaid taxes to be in the region of 400 trillion rials ($3.3 billion).
According to Economy Minister Farhad Dejpasand, the amount is almost 35% of the total annual tax revenue of the government.
It is said that the government can plug a third of its deficit if it can collect unpaid taxes. The budget deficit for the current fiscal year is estimated at 1,500 trillion rials ($12.5 billion).
The government has made known that it wants to increase tax revenues by curbing tax evasion via methods such as promoting the taxpayers’ database, tightening rules on bank transactions and upholding the value-added tax law.
