An MPs' inquiry, as well as an inspection by the Supreme Audit Office (NKÚ) and Government Office representatives, is to take place at the Tax Administration – the new state body recently established to take on the duties of the Tax and Customs Directorates and all regional tax authorities – in Bratislava on Friday, February 17, parliament's Financial and Budget Committee decided at an extraordinary session on Thursday. The inspection teams will look into the legality of actions taken by the Slovak Financial Administration.

Zuzana Narušilová from the Slovak Financial Administration informed MPs at the session that the administration of taxes had collapsed due to failures in a newly implemented information system, which is intended to unify collection of taxes and payroll deductions. Employees of her office do not have access to the electronic databases they need and are having to carry out their activities manually, she said. "They are working on it, but they can't be held responsible for the outcomes," Narušilová said, as reported by the TASR newswire. According to her, the old system was deactivated on January 9 and since then Tax Administration employees haven't had access to any functioning information system.

Finance Ministry State Secretary Vladimír Tvaroška argued that the system is now in its implementation phase. "The switch to the new information system is problematic, but when the new system is implemented, it will be better than the old one," Tvaroška said, adding that everything would be resolved by the end of February. The ministry has said it believes the problems have arisen due to insufficient co-operation with the system provider Novitech, and that it plans to sue the company. Novitech said it is considering counter-suing, however, claiming that the ministry did not sign a contract covering the migration of data, so this was not carried out.

Source: TASR

Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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