Over 1,500 payments totaling approximately €15 million were made
More than 66,000 taxpayers have already connected during the first four days of TaxForAll (TFA) operation with a user account for VAT purposes, or approximately 70% of active VAT registered taxpayers, and more than 1,500 payments totaling approximately €15 million were made, while a refund was made an amount of €1.3 million, the Tax Commissioner Sotiris Markidis told the KYPE.
Specifically, Mr. Markidis said that as of Monday, March 27, 2023, when the 1st phase of the new Computerized System of the Tax Department TaxForAll will be implemented, for taxpayers who do business with the Department for VAT purposes, “more than 66,000 taxpayers have already connected with a user account, i.e. approximately 70% of active taxpayers registered for VAT, which is done gradually and targeted, as he said, “depending mainly on the period of obligation to submit a VAT return or to achieve better levels of compliance and service to taxpayers” .
He also reported that more than 1,500 payments totaling approximately €15 million were made through TFA, some of which were made through credit cards, while approximately 2,000 requests were submitted by taxpayers through the TFA Portal.
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In addition, the Tax Commissioner said that more than 300 VAT refund requests totaling approximately €1.3 million were examined and the amount was returned to taxpayers.
He noted that through the call center 17700/22803803 more than of 1,000 calls with an average service duration of approximately 6 minutes.
Mr. Markidis expressed satisfaction with the timely implementation of the system, the safe transfer of data from the previous computerized system to TFA, as well as the acceptance of TFA by users.
“It is rare that such a large computerization/software development project of the order of €25 million is completed in a reasonable time and enters the operational phase without particular problems”, he underlined.
The Commissioner of Taxation said that this was a result of the determination of the management of the Department of Taxation and the Ministry of Finance to implement the project and the importance it has and expressed thanks to both the Officers of the Project Team and the Department who embraced the project, as well as the contractor company and its partners as well as the IT Services Department for support.
“For the Tax Department that has to manage a wide range of taxes with different legislations, a large amount of information both from Taxpayers' Declarations and information from various databases both from Cyprus and abroad and the large number of taxpayers , the investment in smart modern operational and efficient user-friendly computerized systems is a one-way street”, he underlined.
The priority now, as Mr. Markidis told KYPE, is the implementation of the next two phases of the TFA which it concerns all other types of taxes. He expressed the hope that “if all goes well”, TFA will be fully operational by the end of 2024.
Extension of submission of Statement
Finally, the Commissioner of Taxation said that “although so far no problems have been observed from the interaction of taxpayers with the TFA, to avoid any problems during the first attempts to submit VAT Returns through the TFA, with an announcement by the Department on 24/3/2023, they were given the extensions below:
It stated that for the Tax Period from 01/12/2022 to 28/02/2023 the new date for submitting the VAT Declaration is April 26, 2023 (instead of April 10, 2023) , while for the tax period from 01/01/2023 to 03/31/2023 the new date for submitting the Declaration is May 26, 2023 (instead of May 10, 2023).
