IOTA, represented by Mr Roman Bichevoy, International Taxation Expert participated in the “Belt and Road Initiative Tax Cooperation Conference” held on 14-16 May in Astana, Kazakhstan. Mr Bichevoy delivered a presentation on Taxpayer Services and held short side meetings in the margins of the event, where more than 200 participants from 50 countries and international organisations such as IMF and World Bank were present.
IOTA Secretariat organised a TADAT Training on 8-10 May 2018 in Budapest for IOTA members in cooperation with the TADAT Secretariat. This is the third training held for IOTA members where participants can also gain “TADAT trained” or “Trained TADAT assessors” certificate.
See our latest newsletter about our activities between January and April where you can read about:
- what we discussed in our Principal Contact Persons Forum in Belgium,
- what advantages the IOTA-TIP online data portal brings to tax administrations,
More than 50 participants from 29 IOTA member countries gathered last week to discuss the challenges and latest developments in using highly sophisticated digital solutions in taxpayer services. The tax officials shared their experiences in the use of big data and advanced analytics, customer-oriented cloud and mobile solutions, digital communication channels and even artificial intelligence and robotics. In the interactive workshop delegates highlighted that easy to access and use, highly secure and customer-tailored services are crucial for establishing trust of taxpayers in tax administrations.
On 5 April 2018, Dana Reizniece-Ozola, Minister for Finance, and Dace Pelēkā, Acting Director General of the State Revenue Service of the Republic of Latvia (SRS), presented the specially designed awards and certificates of appreciation to the largest taxpayers of 2017 in Latvia.
Miguel Silva Pinto, IOTA’s Executive Secretary was a keynote speaker in the VERTEX Exchange 2018 Conference, which took place in Amsterdam on 18-19 April 2018. This annual event puts together information and technology experts with corporate users to present new trends and IT solutions for tax management.
Under the motto “advancing with you” the Personal Income Tax Campaign started in Spain with the launching of an app.
From 15th March the new app of the Spanish Tax Agency is available to citizens to start preparing their Personal Income Tax (PIT) return, to be submitted from 4th April and onwards.
Joint IOTA-OECD trainings took place on the collection and use of data for the International Survey on Revenue Administration (ISORA) last week in Budapest. The workshops provided guidance to participating tax administrations and prepared them to report comparative data of a high quality for the ISORA 2018 survey that will be launched mid-May 2018.
Norway and the EU signed an agreement on administrative cooperation, recovery assistance and combating fraud in the field of VAT in Sofia on 6 February 2018. Norway is the first country with which the EU has an agreement in this field. It follows the same structure that is currently used for cooperation between the member states and the same instruments, such as electronic platforms and e-forms. Fraud schemes often exploit weaknesses in the way VAT transaction chains are controlled when they include counterparts located in third countries.
