The Excise Department has blamed the Customs Department for its lower collection of excise on vehicles.

The department will improve its efficiency of tax collection in general, and in particular on oil, vehicles, beverages, beer, liquor and cigarettes, Wisudhi Srisuphan, director-general of the Excise Department, said yesterday.

Deputy Finance Minister Sommai Phasee yesterday met with senior officials at the Excise Department asking them to expand the tax base. The department's collection target this year is Bt279 billion, or about 19 per cent of overall targeted tax revenue for the fiscal year 2007.

Taxpayers should receive equal treatment, said Wisudhi, conceding that manufacturers of vehicles have not yet been treated equally.

Some carmakers exploit loopholes in the law in order to avoid full excise-duty payments, he added. Meanwhile, tax officials pointed to the problem of tax-free zones under the supervision of the Customs Department.

The source, who asked not to be named, said the Customs Department should tighten its rules on these zones and require makers to export all cars produced in tax-free zones, or export at least 90 per cent of their production.

Some auto-makers have partly used tax-free zones as production bases for the domestic market, resulting in lower tax collection by the Excise Department, he said. Carmakers quote prices at the factory in the tax-free zones lower than they should be, he added.

The department estimates that it has lost tax worth about Bt50,000 to Bt100,000 per vehicle. It is also unfair to

those manufacturers who do not have a factory in the zones.

In another development, the Fiscal Policy Office has developed new indicators to monitor the economic situation, said Pannee Sathavarodom, its director-general. Researchers at the agency believe that data for indirect taxes, such as value-added tax, as well as specific business taxes, could be used as coincidence indicators to monitor the economy.

However, critics argue that they are inferior to existing indexes, such as the manufacturing index currently used by the Bank of Thailand and the National Economic and Social Development Board, but they could be used to monitor what is going on in each economic sector.

Wichit Chaitrong

The Nation