Azerbaijan Launched tax reforms for 2016

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev approved the project "Reform agenda, which will be held in the tax field in 2016" and improvement of tax administration.

The special order of the President on 4 August said that the adoption of the document stems from the need to improve the relationship between taxpayers and tax authorities, create better conditions for business, determine the real tax potential based on the rate of development of the country's economy, continue reforms in the tax area and improve tax administration.

The document includes 21 directions of tax reform in 2016.

In particular, the Ministry of Taxes (MT) is ordered to do the following for three months:

- Prepare and submit to the President proposals related to improvement of tax legislation;

-Improve the administration to finalize as soon as possible tax audits, particularly cameral tax audits in compliance with statutory requirements;

-Improve tax administration for the process of determining and recording of results of tax audits, and provide taxpayers participating in inspections carried out;

- Define the criteria for exemplary taxpayers, simplify tax administration in relation to these taxpayers and extend the range of coverage of targeted services;

- Publish information about the exemplary taxpayers complying with the tax laws, and regularly violate tax laws undisciplined taxpayers by posting it on the official website of MH;

-In order to minimize direct contact between taxpayers and tax authorities to expand the use of e-audit and improve the quality of tax audits conducted in this area;

- With a view to improving the services provided to taxpayers, in accordance with modern standards, to ensure the implementation of the Outbound Call Centre function (callback customer service) in the Ministry of Taxes;

-To accurately determine the real tax potential, improve the quality of tax control and transparency in monitoring the use of information technology achievements of the activities to create a risk assessment system that will automatically process, classify, analyze and categorize risks of taxpayers and risk criteria;

-Ensure improvement of administration and education of taxpayers in identifying risk groups of taxpayers in contributions to the state budget of debts, interests and financial sanctions, depending on the particular risk;

-As for the effective organization of cooperation between tax authorities and taxpayers to improve the form of tax returns;

-To save time and resources, to ensure the taxpayers through the Call Center of the Ministry of Taxes the provision of services such as registration of individuals, obtaining a duplicate certificate, ASAN signature change, and suspension or restoration activities.

The Ministry of Justice together with the Ministry of Taxes, in order to increase the efficiency of the MT and to provide execution of unexecuted court decisions in connection with the recovery of arrears of tax evasion, charged with ensuring, within three months, more rapid implementation of measures against persons who have violated the law in this field, to submit in connection with the proposals for the improvement of legislation to simplify the workflow process and identify faster mechanisms to reduce the number of unexecuted judgments; ensure bringing of normative legal acts and normative acts of central executive bodies in compliance with this Decree and inform the Cabinet of Ministers. -0 ----