On 22 November 2023, IOTA successfully held its latest Webinar, “Addressing the Future Development of International Cooperation in Tax Matters”. This digital event had over 170 registered participants from 31 IOTA countries and featured speakers from four member tax administrations: Greece, Hungary, Poland, and the United Kingdom.

Under the framework of the IOTA 2023 Work Programme Activities, another great technical event was held from 14-16 November 2023 in Budapest, Hungary. After five years of operation in a row, the Meeting of IOTA Forum Human Resources Management “Innovations and Trends in Learning and Development (L&D) in a Modern Tax Administration” brought together over 50 tax officials from 26 IOTA member administrations gathering in person at the venue and had more than 70 participants in the online space. For the first time, the HRM Forum was hosted in collaboration with the current IOTA presidency, the National Tax and Customs Administration of Hungary (NTCA).

IOTA is pleased to announce that representatives of the Hungarian IOTA Presidency paid an official visit to the IOTA Secretariat in Budapest, Hungary on November 16th, 2023. During the visit, Mr. Ferenc Vágujhelyi, President of IOTA, and his delegation had a productive meeting with the management of the IOTA Secretariat. The Executive Secretary of IOTA, Mrs. Alix Perrignon de Troyes, provided an overview of IOTA, which serves as a unique international platform in its field of operation, and informed the delegates about the IOTA Technical Assistance Service, as well as IOTA's cooperation with other international organisations, such as the OECD, CIAT, NTO, and IMF.

On 1 November 2023, Latvia, one of the founding members of IOTA, celebrated the 30th anniversary of the foundation of their State Revenue Service (SRS). On the occasion of this anniversary, SRS organised a large-scale international conference in Riga, Latvia, focusing on the theme of “SRS 30. Transformation and Sustainability”. At this conference, IOTA was represented by its Executive Secretary, Alix Perrignon de Troyes who joined online this remarkable experience.

As committed in the Strategic Plan 2020-2023, the Spanish Tax Agency has made progress in the simplification of the language used in the communications with taxpayers with the aim to eliminate barriers to understanding and minimize the indirect administrative burden to citizens, thus facilitating voluntary compliance. To this end, the Tax Agency has modified up to eight communication and notification templates used in its most common procedures.

This week, IOTA had the pleasure of hosting the second fully face-to-face technical activity of its 2023 Work Programme, the IOTA Workshop “Contact Centre of the Future: Digital Transformation Best Practices”. The event took place from 7-9 November in Budapest, Hungary and brought together 58 tax officials from 29 IOTA member administrations. It was an absolute pleasure seeing some familiar and lots of new faces in the conference room, especially as the last in-person meeting relating to this activity happened in 2019 - just before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On 26 October 2023, IOTA successfully held its latest Webinar on “Understanding and Mitigating the Disinformation Threats in Tax Administration”. This digital event had over 50 registered participants from 19 IOTA countries and featured speakers from two member tax administrations: Lithuania and the United Kingdom.