The Mauritius Revenue Authority (MRA) has gone live with its first implementation phase of tax and revenue management software from SAP AG, registering all tax types except personal and corporate income tax.
p>The Mauritius Revenue Authority (MRA) has gone live with its first implementation phase of tax and revenue management software from SAP AG, registering all tax types except personal and corporate income tax.
The second phase of the project, which will extend operations for personal and corporate income tax, is scheduled to go live in October 2010.
In the implementation process, the MRA created unique taxpayer account numbers across tax types, migrated historical data such as returns and accounting data, moved 489,056 tax-payers into the new system, and developed 21 interfaces, both internal and external, for data capture and decision-making. As a result of this effort, the MRA now provides tax officer-centric and tax payer-centric environments, allowing both personnel and citizens to become closely involved in the taxation system. For example, through the Tax Officer Portal, a tax office can now follow the status and interactions with a tax payer from a central platform. Using the workflow component, tax officers will see all tasks assigned to them in an organized interface. From the taxpayer end, with the Tax Payer Online Portal a citizen can complete online registration, file returns and make payments. A complete history will be kept so that taxpayers can see all previous interactions with the MRA.
The project was steered carefully under the guidance of Soobhash Sonah, director of Information Systems, Mauritius Revenue Authority. To pave the way for the new system’s launch, the MRA undertook several steps, including: collaboration with other registration bodies, including Registrar of Companies, Ministry of Social Security and National Transport Authority; alignment of processes from multiple legacy systems to SAP standard integrated processes; introduction of workflow-driven processes into the MRA; empowerment of users on multiple technologies on a single platform with a single sign-on process; and implementation of role-based access to control security aspects of the system.
A major contributing factor to the success of the implementation of the project was also due to the involvement of the MRA Executive members. Since the project is at the centre of the core business of MRA, their involvement was very instrumental in driving the success of the project. The IT Director, Mr Sonah, whose previous employment was with an SAP customer in Mauritius also, was a massive boost to the project.
The system was implemented by State Informatics Limited and initially with Twenty Third Century Systems (TTCS) then with Invenio Business Solutions.
