New profiles, same challenges – Part I
What are we talking about?
During the recent CIAT General Assembly, last April, and the IOTA General Assembly in June 2017, there were numerous references to the progress made by the world’s tax administrations in the field of public revenue management; There is much merit in the various initiatives that TAs implement, such as the redesign of their processes and the use of IT tools to boost the increase of their results.
But there was also room to put on the table of dialogue of these meetings, another reflection of great weight: “A lot of these results have to do with people.”
These were some of the statements that accompanied the interesting presentations shared by colleagues from different latitudes of the planet; we can at least infer that these verbs are conjugated verbs in different verb tenses, involving from the infinitive to the future, tacitly or explicitly: it was recognized that much of what is achieved is through people.
For more than thirty years, TAs have become more and more technical teams with high demands; But in the last ten years, these demands are far-reaching, and paradoxically they are the same as those of thirty years ago: preventing and combating tax evasion and avoidance, increasing tax collection and preventing tax fraud and smuggling. Despite so much effort it seems that something is missing, without mentioning the responsible citizen participation.
So, given these demands to the TAs, what new conditions do we have to talk about a new tax officer profile? Are yesterday’s skills and competencies the same as today, or will it be just a slight move to formulate the new requirements?
According to data from the World Economic Forum, 75% of the new professional careers that we need in the world do not yet exist, such as in the areas of preservation and cleanliness of the environment and something no less interesting as the sciences of data, electronic medicine or community administration.
Are the professionals we have today able to sustain the demands for the next three decades?
Let us then think of some of these new challenges: as a coherent legal framework that is articulated and robust to favor the achievement of strategic objectives, a organizational model that is correctly balanced with the tax system, an infrastructure of processes and resources oriented to address the volumetric pressure of our TA , A tax policy consistent with an aspiration for equity and sustainable development, technologies at the service of people and oriented to services and processes, and a public liaison interface close to the taxpayers’ reality conditions in our countries, and of course, an absolute ethical conduct required of everyone.
What is expressed here in words is simple demagogy without the human factor. That is, without people, what you read cannot be reached. We can mention, as referents, some TAs that carry out very successful practices in this area; Just to name a few, we have Nicaragua that allocates 2% of its current expenditure to the hiring and training of its personnel; Cuba, as the only tax administration in the region that has 75% of women in the ONAT, among other interesting practices.
How are we preparing to face what is next?
It is necessary to equip officials and collaborators with new skills, so that they are in a position to combat the new mechanisms of evasion and avoidance, to understand the greater commercial openness of our countries with other regional blocks in the world, to analyze and evaluate the push of the bitcoin and blockchain, and why not say it, face the fiscal competition between countries that is already de facto a whole reality. Are these the things that our university students have already learned in a globalized world, barely talking about income management? Or is the development of the auditors and other public servants that collaborate in the tax administration a real merit of our organizations?
Can a new auditor be incorporated from his / her entrance to a unit dedicated to tax intelligence or transfer pricing control? To paraphrase an esteemed colleague, that deserves a simple and categorical answer: It depends. If we create the conditions for that to happen, it is absolutely viable, but if we replicate traditional management models, perhaps the answer is no.
Within the framework of the responsibilities of the tax administrations, it is necessary to provide the organization with competent persons to fulfill the functions and the specific operational framework, as the case may be, but we still have to recognize that the breaches are addressed separately, if the gap is in technology, we invest in this field and it is not in harmony with preparing teams for technological change, operational change, new management model, a new organizational culture, a new tax law; And in many experiences the implementation is knocked down, because of that detail: People.
If we randomly consult strategic planning documents from different TAs, we will find that in almost all cases, people are recognized as highly valued parts in the system, but when we see the investment for the personnel development, the proportion is not so favorable, and it is really worrying if we consider that the budget of an TA devotes (mere intuition) more than 70% to operating expenses, leaving little room to invest in innovation and development of people.
The risk involved in this logic is to create two parallel tracks that will circulate at different speeds; on one hand we will find IT management, services, procedures and fiscal regulations running at high speed; and on the other, people with little capacity to adapt to new requirements waiting for the traffic light to change. A situation that does not suit us in any way.
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