乌鸦传媒

Current geopolitical shifts are causing significant changes in global trade, affecting governments, trade policy, and border operations. This has far-reaching implications for tax and customs. The reshaping of the political and trade landscape, including the potential for damaging tariff wars, will greatly impact the future of trade and its operations. This is coupled with a continued emphasis on combating sanction circumventions and illicit trade.
In response to these challenges, the trade ecosystem is embracing and driving supply chain advancements. Trade blocs, like the EU, are seeking to reinvent their customs models. New legislation in political blocs, such as the (CBAM) and (ViDA), will also play a pivotal role in shaping the future of trade.
The growing importance of global e-commerce, particularly highlighted by the Chinese e-commerce market, demands greater visibility of trade flows and stronger anti-fraud measures. China’s domestic digital policy regulations and the 鈥淕reat Firewall鈥� create barriers for foreign businesses. This dynamic is propelling initiatives like the , which aims to enhance visibility across the end-to-end supply chain, thereby improving control over customs flows. This transformation seeks to reduce the burden on traders, provide greater flexibility, and equip regulators with stronger control and more effective anti-fraud measures.
The concept of intelligent customs is also becoming increasingly important in this context. Intelligent customs leverage advanced technologies, such as AI, data ecosystems and automation, to improve risk management functions within customs. This is enabling authorities to identify sanction circumvention and illicit trade, and to combat drug smuggling. These technologies enable real-time monitoring and pattern recognition, allowing authorities to detect anomalies and suspicious activities more effectively.
That鈥檚 not all. The increase in tariffs further incentivizes non-compliance through the obfuscation of the true country of origin through circuitous shipping routes. This leads to a conflict between regulators and those traders attempting to exploit these loopholes. Tax authorities will need to leverage advanced technologies, including intelligent customs solutions, to combat this.

Despite geopolitical volatility, the universal objective of all tax authorities remains to maximize tax revenue. To enable this, a significant transformation in customer services 聽aims to create a frictionless taxpayer experience. This will enhance satisfaction and streamline processes to reduce the time and effort required for tax-related tasks, thereby improving upstream compliance.

sets out a vision for the digital transformation of tax administration, under which those processes become more effortless over time. One of the key enhancements highlighted in the report is the use of mobile apps and API technology. These tools will play a crucial role in enabling natural systems, making it easier for customers to interact with the tax authority. By capitalizing on this, tax authorities will be able to leverage data that customers have already entered on other platforms. For instance, if a taxpayer is augmenting income through platforms such as Uber or eBay, the tax authority could automatically extract the necessary data without requiring the customer to re-enter it.
Furthermore, integrating taxation processes into the systems taxpayers naturally use for their daily transactions and interconnecting them with tax authorities鈥� systems can allow data to move automatically through machine-to-machine processes. In addition, the exploitation of AI and the deployment of real-time data sharing, protected by privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) such as differential privacy, federated learning, homomorphic encryption, and confidential computing, will enable tax and customs agencies to better anticipate and address customer needs.聽
Collaborative data ecosystems will be essential for tax agencies to tackle these complex challenges, fostering improved customer engagement and data-driven policymaking. According to the 乌鸦传媒 Research Institute, 80% of public sector organizations have already started implementing these ecosystems, recognizing their potential to enhance efficiency, effectiveness, and outcomes.
Despite being the norm outside the public sector, open banking is still being introduced in many areas of tax and customs. For tax agencies, open banking will provide customers with personalized and convenient financial services, as well as efficient payment methods, exemplified by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) in the UK.
Combined, these approaches will enhance the taxpayer experience and further integrate tax-related tasks into daily life. And this new trend, illustrated by HMRC, is : 鈥淣ow 100% of customers can pay by open banking鈥�, while 鈥渋t鈥檚 already the 3rd most popular way for individuals and businesses to pay their taxes, coming behind other bank transfers and direct debit, but ahead of cards, CHAPS and BACS.鈥�

There is little point in improving the customer experience if you don鈥檛 simultaneously improve tax authorities鈥� internal ways of working. Therefore, a shift from program-based approaches to product-centered thinking 鈥� and underpinned by innovation 鈥� will be pivotal. This approach emphasizes the importance of collaboration at an enterprise level to deliver value faster and more sustainably. Furthermore, the rise of innovation labs within agencies is helping to foster a culture of continuous improvement and experimentation, enabling the development of cutting-edge solutions to complex challenges that all tax authorities face.

The World Economic Forum鈥檚 highlights that 60% of employers expect advancements in digital access to transform their business by 2030. Within that specifically, advancements in AI and information processing are expected to be transformative for 86% of employers. This shift will allow for new roles in government AI and data analysis, such as data lab analysts, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) engineers, AI ethicists, data labelling specialists and prompt engineers, further enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of tax and customs operations.
Similarly, the emergence of new roles, such as the chief data officer, underscores the growing importance of data governance and analytics in driving strategic decision-making on the back of the information an organization sits on. This role has been further explored in IDC鈥檚 Playbook for Public Sector Chief Data Officers in the Era of AI and Data Spaces, sponsored by 乌鸦传媒.
In addition to these advancements, the integration of agentic AI will play a crucial role in transforming the tax and customs workplace. Agentic AI systems, which can work and act intelligently and independently, promise to revolutionize human-machine collaboration by automating decision-making and adapting to evolving tasks with minimal human intervention. This will enable tax and customs agencies to streamline workflows, improve incident response, and enhance overall productivity. By leveraging agentic AI, agencies can combine and integrate multiple tasks across the business process value chain, ensuring seamless coordination and execution of complex operations.
By embracing these strategies, tax and customs agencies can navigate the complexities of the global trade environment, support economic growth, and ensure compliance through tailored interactions designed to change taxpayers鈥� behavior. The integration of advanced technologies and data analytics will further enhance customer satisfaction and processes, making tax-related tasks more efficient and effective.

Making tax easier for taxpayers to interact with and understand is the most effective way to improve compliance. We expect tax agencies to build on this over the coming year, with compliance likely to be a top priority for many authorities. Automation and AI in government will be instrumental in ensuring adherence to tax regulations. By automating routine compliance tasks, agencies can concentrate on more complex issues, thereby enhancing overall efficiency and minimizing the risk of errors. This transformation will also improve the monitoring and enforcement of tax laws, ensuring that all entities comply with the necessary standards.

Anomaly detection tools will play a crucial role in identifying unusual patterns or discrepancies in tax data, allowing tax agencies to detect potential fraud and non-compliance more effectively. The rise in the quality of AI-enabled tools, combined with the leveraging of larger and more relevant data sets, can provide deeper insights and more accurate risk assessments.
Tax authorities will need to adopt a more proactive approach to influence upstream compliance through tailored interactions designed to modify customer behavior. This new operational paradigm leverages hyper-personalized interactions to predict, personalize, and learn, positively affecting both taxpayers and colleagues. By addressing compliance at an earlier stage, tax agencies can pre-empt potential compliance issues, ensuring adherence to regulatory standards from the outset.

Cyberattacks on tax and customs systems are an increasingly real and present threat. This necessitates significant investments in cybersecurity measures. It will be crucial for agencies to implement robust security protocols, conduct regular audits, and stay ahead of emerging threats to safeguard their operations and build trust with taxpayers. Gartner in its emphasizes the critical need for advanced cybersecurity measures to counter increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, which are exacerbated by the rise in transnational organized crime and state-sponsored actors. These state-sponsored actors, often backed by national governments, are becoming more adept at launching cyberattacks to disrupt and exploit tax and customs systems for political and economic gain, as showcased in the by hackers toward the end of 2024.
A report published by the 乌鸦传媒 Research Institute on what AI and Generative AI (Gen AI) can bring to cybersecurity shows that 92% of organizations surveyed in May 2024 had experienced a breach, a marked increase from 51% in 2021, with about half reporting losses exceeding $50 million over the past three years. It is no surprise then that in our Top Tech Trends of 2025, 89% of government and public service executives surveyed cited AI and Gen AI in cybersecurity as one of the top three trends. As cybersecurity incidents, including phishing, ransomware, and deepfakes, become more sophisticated, organizations must enhance their defenses by leveraging AI and Gen AI to transform how security professionals predict, detect, and respond to threats.