Opportunity and good mood

Various electronic services need to rely on other services in order to properly operate. Some of these services would not be successful if they could not fit into an already large existing, users’ network. Without this potential user base, it would just be “a good idea”.

An example of such a service is the controversial application “Bang With Friends”, which depends on Facebook large base of contacts, which allows a user to select friends in the social network with whom he or she would like to have a “close encounter of the third kind”, in which the other end only learns about if he or she is also a user of the application and accepts the friend’s proposal.  If both agree, the meeting is quietly arranged, and if there is no mutual interest, nobody knows about it. I am sure that very few tax administrators could be interested in using such peculiar service, but this illustrates how a service can be dependent on an existing platform. In order to operate, the service requires a prior users and contact network. In fact, to most contacts, even if they subscribe due to a scientific curiosity, their registration would remain secret.

Walking the beautiful and wonderful streets of Buenos Aires, city we visited during the CIAT General Assembly of 2013, we were surprised to see it flooded with the kind of AFIP “spots” I commented in a previous post : “And surely you don’t have anything to tell about that Ferrari?. They are located in restaurants, drugstores, Chinese Convenience Stores and even in taxis. This has an important impact, at least in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. It’s something similar to a social network with many users.

Of course, they have a tax purpose and some citizens already have used the mobile app to read the QR spot, and check the taxpayer’s registration, or to report a sale without invoice, or the presence of more personal than reported by the employer to the social security. But the possibilities to interact are huge. The services that could be built on this platform are very interesting. It’s something like “Bang with friends” on the social network.

Let’s think about, for example, a tool that, through AFIP services and with some extensions, would allow taxpayers as consumers, to file complaints at the store, right after a purchase. Complaints, which characterization and target would be determined by the taxpayer’s main economic activity, and that could address product quality issues, unauthorized product sales, expiration dates on medicines, and sanity conditions. They could also capture data at a night entertainment place, and check with city authorities if it has fire permits, or other safety regulations when required, and the maximum capacity considered safe for users. They could even verify if the current show is authorized and if the seating dispositions are respected. In another example, a taxi user could spot the taxi or driver’s data, with the photo included, and through GPS location, with those available smart devices, report the location where they have used the vehicle.

Without doubt, all these services could be separately implemented by each state agency. But in order to achieve this, the effort should be repeated several times. For this reason, the Tax Administration could be in the position to provide these services on its platform, on its mobile application, and along with the button to use for reporting sales without invoice, other options to file different complaints that would be shared with the appropriate entities could be included.

Some cooperation and agreements issues are still to be resolved, as well as the verification that the protection of the tax data would be preserved, thus I believe that these services would be appreciated by many citizens. We still don’t know If they could become as popular as “bang with friends”.

Greetings and good luck

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