RSL, LAA launch Automatic Compliance Project

Revenue Services Lesotho (RSL) in partnership with the Land Administration Authority (LAA) this week launched the Automatic Compliance Project (ACP) to simplify and automate the tax compliance process.

LAA director general, ‘Mataeli Makhele Sekhantṧo, said the purpose of the project is to ease the process of filing tax returns for compliance, thus enabling taxpayers (employees) to file in their comfort.

Besides, the Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) return is pre-populated for ease of submission and the role of the taxpayer is to confirm, upload and submit the return with considerable ease.

The launch comes after the two bodies signed a memorandum of understanding to facilitate exchange of information in July 2013. In November 2023 they both agreed to pilot the ‘Automatic Compliance Project’ on PAYE e-filling, which was launched on Tuesday. They formed a project team whose main task was to spearhead the project; the team consisted of officers from ICT, finance and human resources departments of LAA.

 “As the Authority, we are already using the system and we are proud to say that RSL is already retrieving the PAYE file from the month of August this year,” Sekhantṧo said.

For her part, RSL commissioner general ‘Mathabo Mokoko said this project represents a significant milestone in their efforts to streamline and modernise the tax compliance process for businesses and individuals alike.

 “Today, therefore, marks an important breakthrough not only for the RSL and LAA, but also for the broader tax ecosystem of our country.

“As we all know, tax compliance can be a complex and time-consuming task. It requires businesses and individuals to navigate a maze of regulations, forms, and deadlines, often leading to errors and inefficiencies. This not only creates a burden for taxpayers but also for tax administrators who must spend valuable resources on enforcement and audits,” Mokoko said.

She noted that ACP aims to address these challenges by leveraging technology to simplify and automate the tax compliance process. Through the use of advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence, RSL should be able to streamline the collection, processing, and verification of tax information, making it easier for taxpayers to meet their obligations accurately and on time.

Furthermore, by automating tax compliance, RSL is not only reducing the burden on taxpayers but also improving the efficiency and effectiveness of its tax administration. This will allow it to better identify and address non-compliance, ensuring that everyone pays their fair share and contributing to a more equitable and sustainable tax system.

“Our ultimate goal with this project is simple yet ambitious as you can imagine. We aspire to transform compliance into an automatic process which will ultimately make tax compliance a default option. This means for anyone to become non-compliant they will have to make an effort.

“The launch, therefore, marks the beginning of a journey. The ACP, as alluded to above, seeks to seamlessly integrate tax compliance into daily lives of taxpayers through integration of systems with strategic partners such as the LAA.

“Given the enormous task at hand, we made a deliberate decision that we will eat this elephant piece by piece, with the delivery of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) being the auto-population of PAYE return for RSL, LAA and government ministries. RSL in this case being referred to as a taxpayer not a tax administration,” Mokoko added.

Sharing her testimony on the newly implemented payroll automatic system, LAA accounts assistant, ‘Maleru Tebello, said: “I am excited to share with you that for the month of August, we filed our pay-as-you-earn return using the automated system, and it works wonderfully.

“I just have to log into the e-tax platform and on the website. After logging in I found the excel sheet already re-populated with quite accurate figures. I was very impressed because at first I had to prepare a spreadsheet separately, do the calculations and sometimes I could get the figures wrong and the system would reject the return, forcing me to edit the spreadsheet which was quite a difficult task.

 “But now the job has been made easier by the system as it calculates everything accurately; mine is just to click the submit button after confirming the figures,” Tebello pointed out.