The virtual Seminar on Business Continuity in Response to COVID-19 was held on 30 July 2020. Representatives from BRITACʘM Council Member Tax Administrations, Observers, and Advisory Board, and officials from the World Bank Group and the OECD attended this Seminar.

Tax administrations worldwide are weathering great challenges brought by the COVID-19 in terms of supporting business continuity. Halting the transmission of the disease meant suspending tax services for the time being. But to keep businesses and restore economies to health quickly, connections between taxpayers and tax administrations needed to be maintained. Against the backdrop of the pandemic containment on a regular basis, making full use of digitalization to ensure business continuity, improve taxpayer compliance, and provide "non-contact" tax service is one of the priorities of tax administrations.

Focusing on the background of the pandemic, Mr. Daniel Laffitte from Dirección General Impositiva of Uruguay, Ms. Angela Ang from Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, and Ms. Chiara Bronchi from World Bank Group shared their experiences and researches on business continuity in response to COVID-19 to satisfy the diversified demand of taxpayers, and ensure the continuity of quality tax services, which are practical and inspiring measures to keep connections between taxpayers and tax administrations.

As the first Seminar of the serial BRITACʘM virtual events, this event served as a good kick-off by making in-depth demonstration over the issue of business continuity. On 6 August, the follow-up meeting of this Seminar will be launched to further discuss measures shared by the three speakers. Comments and questions towards the presentations will be discussed and more experiences on business continuity will be shared during the follow-up meeting. Next, the BRITACʘM will launch more virtual events on tax issues of common concern.