Tax Service fails to ensure sustainability of logging in through "Asan İmza"

Since last summer, the Tax Service under the Ministry of Economy warned taxpayers that from 1 January 2024, access to the departmental portal e-taxes.qov.az will be possible only through the "Asan İmza" system.

This site is used by all business people of the country as it provides services of electronic online declaration of income and payment of taxes. Before 1 January, most taxpayers preferred to log in with their individual codes. With that said, the switch to "Asan İmza" was envisaged to enhance the security of citizens' business activities so that business information could not be easily stolen. 

In order to use "Asan İmza", hundreds of thousands of citizens of the country were forced to buy a mobile phone number with an involuntary monthly fee for mobile phones that they do not use for calls.  Although it was possible to "plant" the "Asan İmza" system on individual phone numbers of citizens who use it as a means of communication on a daily basis.

However, since 1 January, it turned out that some citizens could not access the e-taxes portal using the new "Asan İmza" system at all, while others reported to Turan that the system was not working well.

The Tax Service had similar deficiencies in the functioning of the previous e-taxes pass code systems, which led to failures in the registration of online tax returns.  The tax reports filled out by citizens did not reach their destination, and the IRS mistook these cases for evasion of reporting, and fined the citizens. Turan Agency has concrete proof of such a claim.

Note that since 1 January, the situation has worsened as the new portal login is not functioning stably and the old one is blocked.  The system sends citizens to the entrance through "Asan Xidmet", which does not open. Meanwhile, citizens have only 20 days to submit tax reports for the fourth quarter of 2023, of which the first seven days have expired. Citizens cannot complete and submit online income tax returns to this service.

The Ministry of Economy needs to extend the quarterly reporting time and waive the penalties for individuals who complete their declarations on time and do not deliver them to the IRS due to technical problems.  Reports filled in time remain in individual pages of citizens, in the portal e-taxes.qov.az, with indication of the date of filling in, which can be easily verified.

At that, the Second Regional Department of the Tax Service confirmed difficulties with logging in through "Asan İmza". The employee said that the work is underway to eliminate the problems.  The Tax Service will take into account the temporary difficulties when citizens submit their tax returns late. The old way of logging in to the system continues to function," the official told Turan.