From the PITTA meeting stage, Goran Todorov, chief executive of Data Tech International, framed the stakes of the panel, called “Real-Time Transaction Monitoring: Modernizing GST/VAT Compliance in the Pacific”, bluntly. “Real-time transaction monitoring changes the way revenue administrations work. It gives you information at the moment it happens.”

He added the warning that became the session’s refrain: “If you wait for monthly or quarterly filings… you are already too late.”

Around him sat senior officials from Fiji, Samoa, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, each addressing different political, technical and economic constraints, yet arriving at a shared conclusion: real-time data may be the region’s most effective weapon against revenue leakage.

5 Key Takeaways

1. Real-time tax monitoring is operational: Pacific nations demonstrated that real-time transaction data is already reshaping how governments track sales, enforce compliance, and protect revenue. As Moderator Goran Todorov put it: “If you wait for monthly or quarterly filings… you are already too late.”

2. Fiji’s results show the power of transparency at scale: With over 677 million invoices, as of today, and 46.6 billion FJD in recorded sales now visible on a public dashboard, Fiji has shifted from speculation to data-driven oversight. Compliance Director Kelerayani Dawai says the change was immediate: “The data started coming to us.”

3. Samoa proved that political turbulence doesn’t have to derail reform: Despite early pushback and a change of government, Samoa’s TIMS system survived because real-time data brought fairness and credibility to the tax process. As CEO Fonoti Talaitupu Lia Taefu said: “Electronic invoicing gave us visibility we never had.”

4. Vanuatu exposed hidden revenue and changed business attitudes: A pre-launch manual survey revealed 2 billion Vatu in previously unrecorded sales. Once TaxCore® implementation started, businesses adapted quickly. The country is now enrolling taxpayers and accrediting vendors into the system, a process Brechtefeld said is proceeding faster than expected

5. PNG sees real-time data as the key to trust in the tax system: With widespread mistrust and inconsistent assessments, PNG is betting on nationwide GST monitoring to restore confidence. Commissioner Samuel Loi argues: “We need accurate information at the point of sale. That’s where the tax is lost.”

Fiji: Proof in the Data

Fiji was the first mover, adopting digital fiscalization through VAT Monitoring System (VSMS) powered by DTI’s Taxcore® in 2017. Compliance Director Kelerayani Dawai explained why the country pushed ahead: consumption taxes are central to the national budget. “VAT or GST is 40% of Fiji’s revenue,” she said. “So that is why we have taken this step to be the first in the region.”

Before the system, Fiji relied on returns that often did not match reality. The new data stream changed the dynamic immediately. “Once the system went live, we saw businesses starting to issue receipts correctly. We didn’t have to chase them. The data started coming to us.”

The numbers she cited emphasized the Public Dashboard that was recently released and that shift: more than 656 million invoices, 46.6 billion Fijian dollars in recorded sales, and over 530,000 receipt scans by consumers verifying authenticity for every Fijian to see.

What this yielded was rare in tax administration: spontaneous compliance. “We are no longer guessing,” she said. “We can see what is happening.”

Samoa: Real-Time Tax Monitoring Through Turbulence

On another hand, Samoa’s implementation was more turbulent. Its real-time system, known as TIMS once again powered by DTI’s signature software, drew early resistance from small enterprises and became entangled in a political transition in 2021.

“When the new government came in, one of the changes they wanted to see was the removal of TIMS,” recalled Fonoti Talaitupu Lia Taefu, chief executive of the Ministry of Customs and Revenue.

To keep the system alive, officials returned to consultations and parliamentary committees. “You cannot continue with something that doesn’t have political support,” she said.

Ultimately, the government accepted the system. What convinced lawmakers, Fonoti said, was the way real-time data leveled the playing field and stabilized revenue. “Electronic invoicing gave us visibility we never had,” she said. “It reflects what is actually happening in our economy.”

It was not a story of uninterrupted progress, she added, but one of persistence. “Our staff understand the data, our taxpayers understand their obligations, and the system helps both sides.”

Vanuatu: Measuring the Invisible

In Vanuatu, the one of the newest adopters, the Inland Revenue Department plans to use real-time monitoring to expose what many suspected but could not prove: the country’s sales tax base is far larger than the records suggested.

Ahead of the Vanuatu Sales Monitoring System (VSMS) implementation which is another instance of TaxCore®, officials hired students to manually count transactions in retail shops to compare against reported sales.

George Brechtefeld, who leads the VSMS program, described the findings: “The sales in December 2023 showed that we collected an extra 2 billion Vatu.” For a small economy, the discovery was staggering. It also shifted attitudes among businesses.

“Our plan is that by November and December, we should start a roll out of the taxpayers, especially those who already have a POS system and they should get their system accredited into the VSMS, then once that is done they can transmit data into TaxCore.” Brechtefeld confirmed.

Local revenue authority has been encouraging taxpayers to pay for their own solution, specifically the external sales data controller. Then once they can transfer the data to TaxCore, intention of the Government is to refund the money to the taxpayer for the initial investment into devices.

Papua New Guinea: Trust and Scale

Papua New Guinea, the region’s largest and most complex economy, has recently signed a contract with DTI for the nationwide rollout of the Goods and Services Tax Monitoring System (GMS) powered by our TaxCore®. This way, PNG is stepping straight into the digital times. And, for Samuel Loi, Commissioner of Tax, the urgency is driven as much by public mistrust as by administrative challenges.

“The answer is yes… mistrust between taxpayers and the government is still strong,” he said. He attributed this partly to inconsistent or delayed assessments: “Taxpayers in PNG often feel uncertain about the assessments and whether they are fair or not.”

Real-time data, he said, can close that gap, especially for GST, which PNG aims to make its top revenue source. “We need accurate information at the point of sale. That’s where the tax is lost, and that’s where we must have control.”

With more than 85 percent of the population engaged primarily as consumers rather than formal employees, Loi argued that transparency at the transaction level is essential for equity.

Real-Time Tax Monitoring: A Regional Message

If the Pacific once followed global tax trends from afar, the officials here argued the opposite is now true. Todorov returned repeatedly to the question of fairness: “The moment of creation of the invoice… a seller and a buyer are aware of the transaction, as well as the government. All three parties have the same perception of the data, and you will agree that is only fair.”

The leaders on stage echoed the point in their own ways. “We have seen the difference,” Dawai said. “This supports the structure we need for the future,” Fonoti added. “When you have real information, you can protect your revenue,” Loi said. And Brechtefeld captured the sentiment most simply: “It works.”

The Broader Appeal of Pacific’s Model

Around the world, revenue authorities are searching for reliable ways to close revenue gaps without imposing new taxes or burdensome audits. What the Pacific demonstrated in a single morning was a model based on real-time facts that practically show that domestic revenue mobilization is possible within the current financial settings.

Finally, in a region often perceived as peripheral to global policy debates, the message was unambiguous: transparency is possible, affordable and operational, not theoretical. And the implications go well beyond the islands now leading the way.

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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.

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Online transactions are on the rise

To better understand the problem, it is important to mention that online transactions have seen a steady rise in their use ever since the Covid-19 pandemic struck our lives a couple of years ago. Nowadays, more and more consumers have become used to purchasing their products or services using the online modality.

Professor Richard T. Ainsworth, at the Boston University, published a paper on the so-called “Netflix Tax”, in which he examines how the technology-accelerated increase in cross-border sales threatens revenue in residence-based VAT systems and how companies like Netflix could be taxed. He also compares New Zealand’s legislative approach with technological solutions that TaxCore® powers (such as Fiji’s VMS system) and considers how the approaches combine to fight tax loss. Obviously, this problem has only become more serious since the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak.

What does the law prescribe under these circumstances?

The law is very clear in these situations. Remote, electronic, or “online” trade differ only in one aspect: the personal presence, or absence, of the seller and buyer. It is not mandatory for the buyer/seller to be physically present in the store for the sale to happen. In order to be a legal business, online stores do, however, need to comply with the regulations on fiscalization. This is already present in fiscalized countries using the TaxCore® system such as Serbia.

Merchants selling goods over the Internet, like conventional brick and mortar businesses, have to record the turnover through fiscal devices. They do this to issue a fiscal invoice to the customer together with the product or service, and to record transactions via an electronic fiscal invoice. Merchants can also send invoices electronically as long as the customer gives their consent.

What about the specifics, like the cost of delivery?

Whether or not a merchant will issue a separate fiscal invoice for the delivery of the goods ordered over the Internet will depend on whether we include the cost of delivery in the price. If the merchant includes the cost of delivery in the price of the goods paid by the customer, it will reflect on the fiscal invoice. If, however, the customer paid only for the goods, without the delivery costs, the delivery company (if it’s a separate company from the retail online shop) will have to issue a separate fiscal invoice for the delivery costs. In any case, a merchant needs to always show the delivery costs on the online store in which customers buy the goods.

In Data Tech International, we always like to remind everyone that a fiscal invoice is of extreme importance since it serves as proof that the tax for a particular purchase has been correctly calculated and paid. By following these simple rules, we make sure to return these funds to the Tax Administration budget which are in turn used for the construction of highways, hospitals, schools, and kindergartens, directly benefiting the citizens.

Therefore, by asking for a fiscal receipt, citizens can actively aid in the fight against the grey economy and thus contribute to the further development of the state and society. 

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Overall, the TA executed 19 meticulous inspections at major events like the Assembly of Trumpet Players in Guča, Nisville Jazz Festival in Niš, Tešnjarske večeri in Valjevo, Beer Day in Zrenjanin and The Grill Festival in Leskovac. For this reason, their dedication led to the identification of irregularities in 16 instances, leading to swift bans.

Remarkably, the Tax Administration’s inspectors consistently uphold stringent standards. They undertake comprehensive evaluations of field records through electronic fiscal devices, aligning with regulations related to the new e-fiscalization model implemented in Serbia in 2021, called System for Fiscalization Management, powered by TaxCore® to ensure a proper strategy against tax evasion. 

Noteworthy is the fact that the Tax Administration of Serbia is armed with powerful tools in the form of the new fiscalization model. This model equips them with real-time data on traffic across all retail locations in Serbia. This ingenious approach enables the application of risk analysis and precise targeted checks, empowering them to promptly address any non-compliance among taxpayers.

Video archive (April, 2022), opening ceremony of S.U.F. monitoring centre at Tax Authority Serbia, source: https://www.alo.rs/

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