The artificial intelligence within Angola’s tax management system has helped identify 15,000 companies with irregular tax declarations, the chairman of the board of directors of the General Tax Administration (AGT), José Leiria, announced today.
The official was speaking today at Conversas sem Makas, an initiative led by journalist and economist Carlos Rosado de Carvalho in Luanda. During the event, he highlighted the ongoing modernization of the tax system, which is built upon five pillars—tax administration, the tax system, parafiscality, tax justice, and international taxation—while assuring that the final goal is not to increase the tax burden, but rather to broaden the tax base.
According to José Leiria, the AGT received “at least 40,000 company declarations submitted with zero values” in April and May, but the tax intelligence system revealed that 15,000 of those companies had actually conducted transactions. Among the 15,000 identified companies, some have since corrected their declarations, he added.
“The games in Angola are almost over,” warned the AGT chairman regarding the tax management system that utilizes artificial intelligence, noting that the tax administration can now cross-reference electronic invoices with import documents to detect inconsistencies.
Read more: Angola needs a free economy to finally diversify, says UNITA
Regarding the controversial suspension of tax identification numbers (NIF) that affected thousands of companies, José Leiria explained that only 28% of registered taxpayers maintained a regular tax presence, which prompted the AGT to issue a statement calling for the regularization of their status. Since many taxpayers remained in an irregular situation at the end of November, the AGT suspended all NIFs in January that had gone more than 12 months without submitting declarations.
“With this, we resolved an important issue,” he stressed, indicating that the regularization of NIFs caused revenue to increase from 300 billion kwanzas (about 285 million euros) last year to 430 billion kwanzas (408 million euros) this year.
The official also addressed the fight against the informal economy, stating that the AGT opened 14 tax service posts in informal markets, an operation that allowed them to detect irregularities within large corporations.
“We found trucks belonging to registered large taxpayers parked at warehouses unloading goods. We went to check the SAF-T [tax file] based on the registered NIF and did not find a single invoice in the name of that NIF,” he observed.
Read more: Angola: EU provides €200,000 to help flood victims
With this measure, taxpayers realized that the AGT “is now watching” what happens in the informal sector, leading to direct gains among small taxpayers as well. “We have registered 38,000 taxpayers who used to pay no tax at all, and today we receive 1.6 billion kwanzas [1.5 million euros] directly from those taxpayers every month,” he said.
José Leiria clarified that the operation did not aim to tax stall sales, small subsistence trade, or to close down businesses, while admitting that “there is still a very large segment in the informal sector that evades taxes.”
Regarding international taxation, the AGT chairman noted that Angola already has agreements to avoid double taxation with four countries—Portugal, the United Arab Emirates, China, and Rwanda—and maintains 20 ongoing processes for agreements with other countries, some of which have nearly finalized negotiations.
