What to Consider when Initiating High-Wealth Personal Income Tax Compliance Initiative

Heads of tax administrations and managers currently responsible for the tax administration’s compliance efforts related to ensuring that high wealth individuals (HWIs) are complying with their obligations from South East European (SEE) countries will meet on November 27-28, 2014 at the CEF to discuss lessons learned and good practices in managing HWI compliance. The conference is financed by the Government of Switzerland through the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).

The main objective of the Conference which is being organized by the International Monetary Fund’s Fiscal Affairs Department (IMF FAD) and the CEF is to discuss strategies and methods to manage taxpayer compliance by high-wealth-individuals (HWI). This is an area of growing importance and difficulty. This taxpayer segment represents a significant economic group for any country and the accumulated wealth of this segment can reach a high percentage of total individual wealth for the entire population. Tax revenue losses through non-compliance by this segment can impact severely the public finances in a time when countries are facing difficult challenges in balancing budgets. Some tax administrations have initiated HWI compliance programs to improve voluntary compliance and recover tax revenues from HWI non-compliance. These efforts have resulted in various degrees of success. More tax administrations are considering implementing HWI compliance programs.

This Conference will cover the start-up issues faced by heads of tax administrations to initiate a HWI program and the basics for implementing a HWI compliance strategy. The Conference will also provide a unique opportunity for heads of tax administrations to learn how to evaluate current organizational abilities to engage HWIs, share information on past experience, network with colleagues, and enhance organization capacity to address compliance gap in the HWI segment.

Sessions will be facilitated by Mr. John Buchanan, FAD external expert, with a vast experience in managing HWI programs and providing TA in this field.

About John Buchanan

John Buchanan is a veteran tax administrator who has a long history of designing and managing major tax compliance initiatives in the United States with the Internal Revenue Service. Since 2010 Mr. Buchanan has worked extensively with the IMF’s Revenue Administration Division of the Fiscal Affairs Department to enhance personal income tax compliance, especially in the high wealth sector. He has recently drafted the “Personal Income Tax Toolkit” which FAD is finalizing for publication. Mr. Buchanan is a Certified Public Accountant and licensed as Chartered Global Management Accountant. He specializes in direct tax compliance through application of the compliance risk model.  Prior to teaming with the IMF, Mr. Buchanan had a distinguished thirty-four year career with the IRS. He was awarded the Commissioner’s Award for development of IRS Offshore Tax Compliance Program, as well as being the principle architect for other major IRS initiatives such as the Electronic Business Initiative, Abusive Tax Schemes Program, and Modernization of the Information Reporting Pass-through for Partnerships, Trusts, and Corporations.