And every month 70 percent of Chilean businesses file electronically $650 million worth of sales and withholding tax declarations. By contrast, in neighboring Argentina 15 percent of tax filings are done on line. Even the world's biggest economy lags Chile in this area: in the United States 40 percent of annual income tax filings by businesses and individuals were done on line last year.
Latin America's most stable economy has stimulated use of e-government by offering incentives such as early tax reimbursements for electronic filers, and by forcing public agencies to simplify forms before putting them on line.
Chile's unusually high broadband penetration -- 37 percent of homes with computers have high speed Internet service, according to a recent study by research firm IDC -- also makes people here more likely to download government forms.
Many studies show this slender Andean nation of 15 million people has the most advanced electronic government and digitalized society in the region. But even so, President Ricardo Lagos plans to launch this month his so-called Digital Agenda to make it even more wired.
The plan's objectives include high-speed Internet connections to 80 percent of schools and 100 percent of universities by 2006, a big push to make companies issue electronic receipts, and doubling the number of government on-line forms to 350 by 2006.
Part of the plan was launched in January when Lagos announced the so-called 5D Route to integrate more than a dozen separate government networks into an enormous government Intranet connected to a digital superhighway.
DIGITAL CARROTS
The Association of Information Technologies Companies, the main private sector booster for Lagos's Digital Agenda, estimates an optimum government digital superhighway could cost some $100 million but generate savings by eliminating layers of independent networks.
"The government spends $70 million a year on telecoms. They could save 30 percent of that," said association chairman Raul Ciudad.
Chile has made e-government part of a broader modernization effort. That means state agencies are not allowed to just stick procedures on-line until they streamline them.
"The message has been simplifying the red tape. The government forms that are on line have been redesigned," said E-government Coordinator Patricio Gutierrez.
Rodrigo Van Gindertaelen, 31, a civil engineer who has a small business, does his taxes electronically, has used a government Web site to check out the ownership of a used car he wanted to buy, and followed court cases on line.
"Doing it at the tax office is a whole lot of red tape. You have to get the receipts printed up, then take them to the tax office with your last tax payment statements. Then they decide whether to stamp some of the receipts or all of them, you have to wait in various different waiting rooms. There's a lot of people and lines," he reminisced about his old tax-form days.
Now he generates receipts electronically and instead of paying an accountant, the tax service figures the tax for him and he clicks his mouse to approve or reject the calculation.
Van Gindertaelen is one of 2.5 million Chileans who have registered with the tax agency's Web site to file electronically.
Like many electronic filers, he was drawn in by the government's promise to send him his tax refund within 15 days of filing, a shorter period than for paper filers.
BROADBAND BOOM
The tax office set a high standard for e-government here, and other agencies have followed.
One successful initiative is government procurement. By law, government purchases for more than $500 must be done over the Internet, pushing suppliers to bid on line.
The access to electronic forms for 30 public agencies is through one central government portal www.tramitefacil.cl, which translates loosely to "Red Tape Made Easy."
There, Chileans make obligatory pension contributions for their servants, renew car registrations, order birth certificates, apply for housing subsidies and student loans, and report stolen identification cards.
It does not always work like a charm.
Sandra Santos, a financial analyst, 35, was not able to pay her nanny's pension electronically when it turned out that her employee's pension fund was not connected to the system.
Chile deregulated its telecommunications industry in the early 1980s and private sector sources say the resulting competition in the sector led to high penetration of telephone lines, Internet and broadband connections, which in turn has helped the success of e-government.
Broadband connections, defined as 128 kilobits per second or more, grew to 312,932 in December 2003, up 68 percent from a year earlier, and expected to grow another 22 percent this year, according to IDC.
Chile has 1.4 broadband connections per 100 people, the highest rate in Latin America.
Quelle: Forbes, 01.03.2004
