Taxpayer portal frustrates users, admits FRCS

The Fiji Revenue and Customs Service (FRCS) online portal is not user-friendly and requires significant improvements, says Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs Lenora Qereqeretabua.

Ms Qereqeretabua who is also the chairperson of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence shared this during the hearing on FRCS’s 2022-2023 Annual Report in Parliament today.

“The portal, how user-friendly, it’s not really user-friendly at all,” Ms Qereqeretabua said.

“I mean, I’m a taxpayer and I’ve tried and tried and tried.”

She questioned how much work was being done to make the taxpayer online services portal easier for people to use.

FRCS chief executive officer Udit Singh acknowledged the concerns, revealing the organisation spent the year working with industry stakeholders to enhance customer experience.

“We acknowledge that the customer experience has been clunky in the past and we’ve been working very closely with our taxpayer stakeholders to make it more user-friendly,” Mr Singh said.

FRCS director Taxation Momina Beg said the 2022-2023 financial year focused on getting all processes operational after the system took five years to implement from 2017.

“When we went live, there was a lot of issues in respect to the work process,” Ms Beg said.

“So, this financial year, our focus is more on the TPOS (Taxpayer Online Services) friendliness and how easy for people to comply.”

She revealed FRCS plans to conduct surveys to understand how ordinary people use the system and expects significant enhancements this financial year.

Despite portal difficulties, Ms Qereqeretabua praised FRCS staff for being “extremely friendly, super helpful” when she visited offices for assistance.

She suggested implementing a numbering system at inquiry desks to manage long queues, noting lines were “pretty long” when she visited.

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