The publicity and guidance provided by tax authorities encompass a range of activities designed to improve taxpayers' understanding of tax laws and encourage compliance. These efforts include disseminating tax knowledge, interpreting policies, offering operational guidance, and providing consultation services to taxpayers and the public through various channels and formats. The initiative aims to efficiently address tax-related enquiries in accordance with the law while fostering voluntary tax compliance. At its core, it focuses on accurately conveying tax-related information and facilitating effective interaction regarding tax laws, policies, and procedures. By leveraging online and offline platforms, targeted strategies, and intelligent tools, it helps market entities and the public better understand tax policies, properly fulfill tax obligations, and recognize compliance risks. This initiative encourages taxpayers to comply with tax laws and uphold integrity, supports tax authorities in lawful and efficient tax collection, fosters harmonious relations between taxpayers and the tax administration, and promotes a sound legal framework for tax governance, thereby providing robust support for economic and social development.
From the taxpayer' s perspective, tax authorities' publicity and guidance help them accurately understand tax policies and regulations, avoid tax risks arising from misunderstandings or lack of awareness, and promote standardized tax compliance behavior. It also enables taxpayers to clearly understand applicable tax incentives, fully benefit from policy advantages, reduce tax costs, and protect their rights. Additionally, it enhances taxpayers' tax awareness and compliance capabilities, ensuring smoother fulfillment of tax obligations and avoiding disruptions to the tax process due to operational errors. From the perspective of tax authorities, conducting publicity and guidance is an essential aspect of fulfilling their responsibilities. It helps enhance taxpayers’ compliance with tax laws, foster a culture of fulfilling tax obligations, and promote stable growth in tax revenue. It also enhances communication between tax authorities and taxpayers, enabling timely identification of taxpayers’ needs and issues, improving taxpayer services, and increasing tax administration efficiency. Furthermore, it enhances the credibility and image of tax authorities, fosters harmonious relations between taxpayers and tax authorities, and facilitates the smooth implementation of tax-related policies. From national and societal perspectives, taxation is a key instrument for macroeconomic regulation and serves as a vital economic foundation for state operations and social governance. By promoting compliance awareness and guiding taxpayers to adhere to tax laws and regulations, macro policies can be effectively implemented to achieve the government' s regulatory goals in economic development and social governance, thereby fostering sustainable and healthy socioeconomic growth.
In the mid-19th century, the Industrial Revolution gave rise to numerous new forms of economic interaction, making it difficult for traditional tax systems to encompass these emerging sources of income. To secure more fiscal revenue and fulfill government functions, tax systems worldwide gradually became more complex, with new tax types emerging. To improve tax compliance, tax authorities began proactively assuming responsibility for tax publicity. They disseminated basic tax information to taxpayers by compiling and printing tax manuals, posting notices, and other methods. Tax offices set up promotional noticeboards and arranged for tax officials to provide on-site policy explanations. The policy communication channels for taxpayers were preliminarily established. This stage was primarily characterized by one-way information dissemination, relying on print media and offline scenarios, with coverage limited to urban areas and key tax sources. It marked a shift in tax publicity from “passive enforcement” to “active service” .
After the mid-20th century, information technology became the core driving force behind the transformation of tax publicity and guidance. The widespread adoption of radio and television technology facilitated the mass dissemination of tax policies through radio programs and television documentaries. With the rise of the internet, tax authorities established official websites, launched policy interpretation sections, and developed tax knowledge databases, gradually enabling digital storage and retrieval of informational content. In the early 21st century, the development of social media and short-video platforms spurred innovation in promotional approaches. Tax authorities created animated videos and conducted live-streaming sessions to translate complex policies into easily digestible content, establishing a diversified outreach framework that integrates “online and offline” methods with “text and video” formats. This significantly expanded both the coverage and effectiveness of tax knowledge dissemination.
Taxpayer structures diversify, and market entities across different industries, scales, and types exhibit significant variations in their demand for tax policies, prompting tax publicity and guidance to shift from “universal coverage” to “targeted outreach” . Tax authorities worldwide leverage big data to analyze taxpayer behavior patterns, creating “taxpayer profiles” that enable customized delivery of preferential policies and risk alerts tailored to specific groups such as small and micro enterprises, multinational corporations, and high-income individuals. By incorporating artificial intelligence (AI), smart customer service systems and virtual tax assistants are developed to facilitate real-time interactions for policy enquiries and educational outreach. Some countries (regions) are exploring applications of metaverse and blockchain technologies to create immersive tax publicity environments, including virtual tax offices and interactive policy simulations, thereby advancing tax publicity and guidance toward more intelligent, personalized, and scenario-based approaches. These innovations have significantly improved the accuracy of policy communication and enhanced the taxpayers’ sense of gain.
According to the publicity contents, tax publicity and guidance can be categorized into tax policy publicity, tax procedure guidance, and electronic tax operation publicity. Tax policy publicity refers to the promotion of tax policies and their interpretations by tax authorities. Tax policies include tax laws, administrative regulations, tax authority regulations, and normative tax documents. Tax procedure guidance refers to the promotion of various channels, procedures, methods and required materials for handling tax-related matters by tax authorities. Electronic tax operation publicity refers to publicizing the operational requirements and procedures by tax authorities for taxpayers to use various tax-related digital channels to handle tax and fee matters.
Based on the promotional cycle, tax publicity can be categorized into centralized publicity and guidance, hot topic guidance, and key thematic publicity and guidance. Centralized publicity and guidance refers to conducting focused publicity and guidance activities during specific time periods by tax authorities. Hot topic publicity and guidance refers to collecting frequently asked questions and responding by tax authorities through official websites, notice boards in taxpayer service halls, and electronic displays. Key thematic publicity and guidance refers to organizing specific tax law awareness campaigns by tax authorities based on work plans, policy changes, and taxpayer needs. Tax authorities can promote their services through their own channels or take the initiative to conduct door-to-door outreach and presentations.
Universal tax publicity and guidance primarily involve one - way information dissemination, conveying basic tax system information to taxpayers, with a focus on raising tax awareness and promoting fundamental tax knowledge. As tax systems become more complex and taxpayer awareness needs increase, tax authorities are gradually exploring systematic outreach approaches, forming a multidimensional outreach framework of "online platforms + offline activities + multimedia content," and establishing operational standards and content frameworks for modern tax publicity systems.
▲Establish Physical Publicity Platforms: Set up fixed publicity sections in prominent locations such as taxpayer service halls and municipal bulletin boards, equipped with standardized display boards and brochure racks. Regularly update tax policy announcements and interpretations to establish a consistent communication channel. Select display screens at urban landmarks, high - traffic pedestrian streets, and commercial centers for targeted promotional campaigns during specific periods, utilizing public service videos, pre-feature cinema ads, and other formats.
▲TV and Radio Special Production: Partner with mainstream media to produce tax - themed programs, featuring policy explanations, the latest tax updates, and analysis of tax violation cases through TV documentaries and radio interviews.
▲Social Media Interactive Publicity: Launch official accounts on social platforms and engage in interactive publicity through posts, animations, live streams, and other formats.
▲Establish a Nationally (Regional) Unified Tax Publicity Website: Consolidate scattered local tax publicity resources to create a centralized official tax publicity platform, featuring sections such as policy interpretations, tax filing guides, and frequently asked questions, enabling the centralized release and retrieval of tax information.
▲Develop Mobile Publicity Terminals: Develop tax publicity applications for smart mobile devices, delivering policy updates, customized reminders, and other content to achieve "on - the - go publicity."
▲Develop Content Output Guidelines: Based on laws, regulations, rules, and normative documents, and guided by the principles of "accuracy, compliance, and clarity," standardize terminology, case selection criteria, and establish fixed data sources and labeling formats to ensure the accuracy and consistency of externally shared information.
▲Establish a Unified Promotional Material Library: Systematically organize tax policies, regulations, and interpretive documents to create a standardized promotional material library, ensuring content consistency and timeliness across all channels. When creating promotional materials, include both positive guidance such as policy provisions and operational guidelines, as well as negative examples like illegal and non - compliant cases for cautionary purposes.
▲Product Review: Establish a tiered review mechanism to assess the completeness, compliance, and accuracy of promotional products in terms of content and format, ensuring the final promotional outcome.
▲Enhance Professional Training for Outreach Teams: Conduct regular training sessions for tax personnel on publicity and guidance content. Beyond mastering external publicity and guidance materials and helping taxpayers understand policies and procedures, they should also be proficient in operating various tax systems, adept at handling issues, and aware of service boundaries. This ensures accurate judgment and appropriate publicity and guidance, preventing tax compliance disputes and conflicts. Considering the characteristics of online publicity, training in new media operations, video production, and live - streaming techniques can also be provided to enhance the digital service capabilities of promotional personnel. At the same time, establish a public opinion monitoring mechanism to promptly respond to taxpayer inquiries on social media.
▲Track and Evaluate Effectiveness: Tax authorities should assess the effectiveness of their publicity and guidance efforts, focusing on whether taxpayer filings are timely and accurate, whether their concerns are addressed, and whether they are satisfied with the promotional activities and materials provided by the tax authorities.
▲Offline Publicity Effectiveness Monitoring: Utilize methods such as feedback collection at physical venues and targeted surveys to assess promotional impact and implement timely improvements. Set up feedback books at services for handling tax business locations to encourage taxpayers to evaluate and provide suggestions on the clarity of promotional materials and policy coverage. Tax authorities regularly compile the contents of feedback books, record frequently mentioned issues, and use them as a basis for revising future promotional materials. Meanwhile, tax officials should conduct targeted visits to key tax sources enterprises and industry associations, understanding taxpayers' actual needs for paper - based promotional materials through face - to - face communication.
▲Online Satisfaction Surveys: Collect taxpayers' overall impressions, opinions, and suggestions regarding online promotional content through official website questionnaires and app pop - ups, while analyzing popular policy demands and content gaps. Building an "online + offline" multi - dimensional publicity system is the development direction of tax publicity in many countries. Additionally, some countries have established specialized publicity and guidance institutions.For example, Maldives has established a tax academy to promote tax education and international tax cooperation.
With technological advancements, leveraging artificial intelligence, big data, and metaverse technologies, tax publicity and guidance have evolved from "universal coverage" to "targeted outreach. " By building intelligent publicity systems, creating taxpayer profiles, and developing immersive scenarios, we achieve precise policy information matching and interactive dissemination, comprehensively enhancing the taxpayers’ sense of gain, improving tax processing experiences, and increasing efficiency.
▲AI - Generated Content and Push Notifications: Leveraging natural language processing technology, we develop intelligent publicity chatbots that automatically generate personalized policy interpretations based on taxpayers' enquiry history and filing behavior, assisting them to better understand policy implications.
▲Virtual Assistant Interactive Publicity: Utilizing metaverse technology, we establish virtual tax exhibition halls where taxpayers can participate in policy simulation interactions through VR devices, helping them move from "engaging in idle theorizing" to "integrating knowledge into practice. " The Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (IRBM) employs various methods to enhance taxpayers' compliance awareness and conducts tax - related education campaigns. It also delivers targeted information via email to specific groups to improve outreach precision.
▲Construction of Taxpayer Profiles: Integrates taxpayer basic data from tax administration systems, enquiry records from phone and online channels, behavioral preferences in e - tax systems, and industry - specific characteristics to create labeled profiles for different taxpayers.
▲Dynamic Policy Matching Mechanism: Utilizes machine learning algorithms to proactively deliver tailored policy reminders based on taxpayers' real - time business scenarios. For example, when policies are issued or amended, policy documents and authoritative interpretations are pushed; when handling specific tax - related matters, operational guidelines are provided; when the system issues risk alerts, cases of tax violations are shared—enabling tailored and precise publicity. By leveraging digital tools to enhance the accuracy of policy publicity and guidance, with a focus on practical, scenario - based approaches, China’s "targeted taxpayers policy delivery" for precise publicity and guidance initiative has shifted away from traditional "one - size - fits - all" publicity methods. Tailored contents have significantly improved policy implementation efficiency.
▲ Real - time Performance Tracking: Utilize big data analytics to assess metrics such as click rates, conversion rates, and enquiry relevance, enabling dynamic adjustments to promotional strategies. For example, when policy videos for a specific industry show low viewership, an automatic secondary publicity mechanism is triggered, with targeted distribution through industry associations.
▲ Predictive Publicity Optimization: Utilize AI algorithms to predict policy trends and taxpayer demands, enabling the creation of proactive publicity content in advance. For example, before a reform plan is introduced, the system anticipates taxpayers’ concerns based on historical enquiry data and generates a pre - populated FAQ database in advance.