The official opening of the 20^th PITAA Annual Heads Meeting took place on September the 25^th on Mount Hagen (Papua New Guinea).

During the opening lines, Ms. Kelerayani Dawai, Chair of the Pacific Island Tax Administrators Association (PITAA) Executive Committee and proxy to the Chief Executive Officer of Fiji Revenue and Customs Services, stressed out the belief that “the Pacific region, with its unique characteristics, will play an increasingly significant role on the global stage, our responsibilities are substantial, but so too are our abilities”, she also added that “combining this with improved cooperation among tax authorities, policymakers, development partners, businesses, and others will enable pooling of expertise, resources, and perspectives leading to the development of innovative strategies that promote sustainable taxation practices, thus contributing to social and economic goals nationally and regionally”.

Topics for the meeting

The PITAA Annual Heads Meeting managed to gather 44 delegates from 13 PITAA member countries, as well as 11 partner organizations. The theme the organization selected for this year was “Unleashing Innovation and Collaboration for a Sustainable Future”, this theme included the following subthemes:

• Tax Regulatory Reforms for a Sustainable Future
• Leveraging Technology and Data for Efficient Tax Administration
• Combatting Illicit Financial Flows and Mobilizing Revenue through Collaboration
• Developing a Sustainable Tax Administration

The selected theme perfectly aligns with PITAA’s mission to encourage taxation institutions to design and adopt strategies to modernize and enhance their efficiency.

In this respect, Data Tech International, who had the honor of being invited to the the event as a partner organization, led by Ivan Pavlovic, our Chief Technology Officer (CTO). He also contributed to this international meeting by taking part in round-table conversations about the best way to suppress illicit tax activities, sharing our expertise about assisting tax administrations in providing the tax administration with powerful monitoring tools, capable of preventing and helping combat damaging fraud activities and proposing tax regulatory reforms to unleash TaxCore’s full potential.

On this subject, Data Tech International, with its presence in countries in the Pacific region such as Fiji and Samoa, actively collaborates and plays a key role in supporting and enabling a sustainable and steady growth in tax revenue for both jurisdictions, together with the implementation of a system that is capable to successfully fight against tax evasion and the proliferation of gray economy practices.