Denmark
Project of Danish Customs and Tax Administration (SKAT) for new registered VAT non-filers
SKAT successfully implemented a project aiming to help new registered companies submit their VAT-returns correctly and in time. As a result of the project (run between 1 July 2014 and 31 December 2015) the number of non-filers within the focus group has fallen drastically, by 89 %.
With annually 40.000 new registered companies in Denmark it’s impossible to reduce the Tax and Excise Gap by performing audits alone. Therefore SKAT launched targeted information and audit initiatives and collected knowledge about behavior and causes of mistakes in order to improve SKAT’s initiatives towards new registered companies.
More than 500 new started companies have been visited by the Tax Administration during the project with positive and appreciative approach. The experience of the visits was that in most of the cases new started companies needed low-practical ‘here-and-now’/‘hands-on’ help with for example submitting VAT-returns online. In other cases SKAT has performed real audits and checked the bookkeeping and invoices. One of the goals of the increased information and audit initiatives was to reduce the number of non-filers which was succeeded as the number has fallen by 89 %.