Digital stamps to cut Thailand alcohol tax fraud

Thailand plans to reduce tax evasion with new digital tax stamps, the Excise Department announced.

The department will replace paper excise stamps with digital ones for alcohol, tobacco, and playing cards, said Somchai Pulsawas, the department’s director-general, the Bangkok Post reports.

Currently, businesses selling these products must stick government-issued paper stamps on their products to show that they have paid excise duties.

However, businesses have been found duplicating these stamps or even reusing them across products. The new digital stamps will have QR codes with details on the product and its manufacturer, making it harder to reuse the stamp. This would also allow officials to check whether tax had been paid on the product by scanning the code.

With about 100 different types of paper excise stamps, it is hard for officials to keep track of them all. The department plans to reduce them to just two stamps - a blue one for domestic products and a red one for imported ones, Pulsawas said.

The new stamps will increase revenue on alcohol, tobacco, and playing cards by 10%, he added, as businesses will find it harder to avoid taxes.

Image by Arthit Suriyawongkul, licensed under CC BY 2.0