Presentation of the New Avatar Electronic Fiscal Solution for the Optimization of Tax Collection and Compliance

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, June 30, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

An innovative line of products to leverage domestic tax resources in emerging and developing countries and drive their development 

Avatar Technologies introduced its line of products and services during the latest African Tax Administrators Forum (ATAF) conference, which was held at the Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe from 20 to 22 May 2015. This high-level conference gathered participants from all over the world to investigate ways of leveraging global ICT trends to enhance the modernization of tax administration, with an emphasis on helping African authorities to become leaders in this domain.

Tax authorities seeking to achieve this goal will find in Avatar an efficient and powerful ally. As an electronic solution aiming to optimize tax collection and compliance, Avatar enhances the authorities' visibility over the tax-related data and enables them to counter fraud more efficiently than paper-based methods.

The solution was designed to create a tax compliance-enabling environment and to reduce the cost of collection in all areas of the retail sector, for the benefit of the governments, the taxpayers and the consumers, thus involving all three groups of stakeholders in the compliance process.

The Avatar Fiscal Cloud forms the core of the solution. This Cloud-based tax data ecosystem is controlled by the regulatory authority and is fed, in real time, by the latest generation of sales-recording devices, Avatar G4 or G5. The Avatar Fiscal Cloud allows the tax authorities to access, in real time, the data they need in order to accurately determine the revenue it is owed from the retail sector and to curb tax fraud.

Due to the sensitivity of the data, the Avatar solution was designed to process, record, encrypt and transmit the information related to sales transactions in a highly secure way, using Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to provide three primary services:

• Authentication: Verifying that the devices communicating are 100% authentic.
• Integrity: Ensuring that the information has not been altered during transaction and/or transmission.
• Confidentiality: Guaranteeing that the data can only be decrypted using unique authorized equipment.

Avatar is aware of the fact that achieving tax compliance is not only driven by monitoring and law enforcement, but also by incentivization. This is why Avatar aims to make compliance easy, affordable and rewarding for the taxpayers. The latter benefit from 24/7 in-country customer support and can retain already-existing devices. Avatar also provides them with free access to several value-added services, such as AvatarBooks, a fiscally compliant, highly secure and user-friendly Cloud-based application that allows for efficient accounting and tax management.

As for the consumers, they are also brought within the compliance circle through an incentive program, in the form of a Fiscal Lottery. A lottery ticket number is provided on every receipt printed using an Avatar G4 or G5 device. Avatar understands that it is crucial to involve the consumers, as they have the power to motivate traders to comply simply by claiming their purchase receipt.

The ultimate purpose of Avatar is not only to help emerging and developing countries become leaders in tax administration, but also to provide them with an innovative way of financing their own development, and thus to take charge of their own socio-economic future, while reducing their dependence on foreign aid.

ABOUT AVATAR TECHNOLOGIES LTD 

Avatar Technologies Ltd (ATL) provides cutting-edge Electronic Fiscal Declaration (EFD) solutions to revenue authorities in Africa. ATL was founded by Global Voice Group S.A (GVG), the World Leader in Telecom Governance and Revenue Assurance Technologies™, and the pioneer of revenue assurance solutions in the telecom sector since 2005. Directly supported by GVG, ATL brings to revenue authorities more than 10 years experience in the development and implementation of cutting-edge revenue assurance solutions for governments and regulatory authorities.  

Website: http://www.avatar-technologies.com/