SLOVAK tax and customs administration will undergo an extensive reform in the near future, Marek Lendacký, general manager of the Department of Strategy of the Slovak Finance Ministry, said at an American Chamber of Commerce tutorial called Paying Taxes 2008, according to the SITA newswire.
The Finance Ministry is drafting plans that should advance to the commenting and public debate phases in the coming weeks. The Cabinet will address the issue by the end of March 2008, he said.
The reforms will focus on the Tax and Customs Directorate, which will be connected in order to unify levies and tax collection, reduce the number of employees by 15 to 20 percent and improve electronic communication with payers.
The whole reform should be finished by 2014, with the first phase completed by 2012. Lendacký added that the proposed reforms will largely solve the most critical issues businesses face when dealing with the tax system.
The reform will create a financial administration that consists of one management centre and headquarters and eight financial offices, which will be entitled to create further regional offices according to need. This will replace the current system, which has one tax headquarters, eight regional administrations and 101 tax offices - a number Lendacký considers unacceptably high.
Another innovation of the proposal is so-called self-taxation, which would allow taxpayers to calculate the levies from VAT themselves.
In addition, tax forms will be simplified and a uniform identification for legal and natural entities will be introduced.
