Video message to Commissioners on Covid-19 Crisis Support

Diána Schreiter's picture
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A short video message from Frantisek Imrecze, Executive Secretary,

to inform you about our initiatives aiming to support you in countering the impacts of the Covid-19 crisis.

 

 
 

 

The wording of the message

 

Dear Commissioners of IOTA Tax Administrations,

 

We, in the IOTA Secretariat fully understand the width and the depth of the Covid -19 crisis impacting your operation, the sustainability of tax revenue and heavily impacting the sustainability of businesses and lives of citizens in your respective countries. In my address to you, I do not want talk about the crisis, I would like to share with you how IOTA is going to support you in countering the impacts of this crisis.

Currently, there are 2 components in our Crisis Resolution Package which will be continually introduced to you in the following days and weeks:

 

1. Covid-19 Crisis Measures in Tax Administrations

  • IOTA is teaming up with ISORA partners ( OECD and CIAT) to produce a publication on measures being taken by Tax Administrations across the globe to counter the impacts of the Covid-19 crisis
  • In the first stage of this cooperation, IOTA teamed up with OECD Forum on Tax Administration (FTA) Secretariat to contribute to the OECD publication “Tax administration responses to Covid-19” with a survey on measures in the 16 IOTA members who are not members of the OECD FTA.

 

2. Covid-19 Crisis focused IOTA Work-programme

  • We realize that many of the IOTA technical events and activities planned for 2020 need to be refocused and address  topics which are more relevant in countering the Covid – 19 crisis in your Tax Administrations
  • For this reason, the IOTA Secretariat will shortly contact you and we will ask you to share your specific needs and priorities for IOTA activities, to be organised in the second half of 2020 through a survey.

 

I believe and hope you have noticed that IOTA is fully functional and working digitally

  • we have been practising remote working for over 2 weeks now and delivering digital events
  • we were able to adjust quickly to assure business continuity of IOTA work. Also, I hope you will notice soon a more effective communication from IOTA
  • all IOTA technical events scheduled for April and May have been postponed for the second half of this year or reformated to digital
  • the Executive Council Meeting in May will be transformed into a digital format too
  • in April, we will make a decision with the Presidency and the Executive Council with regard the General Assembly planned for 24-26 of June and we will inform you accordingly.

 

We are Updating the IOTA Strategy and IOTA Charter

  • in late 2019 we started the very important work on reviewing the IOTA Strategy and the IOTA Charter in order to make both documents more relevant and forward-looking
  • the guiding principles of the IOTA Strategy update are  “protect the core” and “smart growth”.
  • inevitable “Charter maintenance” work has been done and new articles were added to reflect growth and organisational development
  • a survey on critical changes to the IOTA Strategy and Charter will be sent to you soon to get your views and comments on the proposed updates
  • by listening to all the measures IOTA undertakes you might have noticed that there are more surveys than usually going to be circulated among IOTA members. IOTA needs to get your feedback on the Strategy and Charter review proposals. Your feedback on tax administration areas which are directly linked to countering the impacts of the Covid-19 crisis is extremely important for us to refocus and adjust our technical activities activitie for the second half of the year.

 

Thank you very much for listening to this video message and I am absolutely sure that we will come out of this crisis stronger than before.

 


 

In case you have any document of information which you find worth to share regarding the actions, measures or concrete experiences in countering the crisis, please do not hesitate to upload it to the subpage focusing on Covid-19 Crisis Support on IOTA website in order to share it with other members.