The Directorate for Indirect Taxation of BiH will comply with the Decision of the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data of BiH, which prohibited them from processing citizens’ data with the aim of issuing qualified electronic certificates for electronic signing, he confirmed for ATV Director of the Administration, Zoran Tegeltija.
Since the day they received the Agency’s Decision, the Administration has been looking for a way to collect applications and collect VAT and customs duties.
“Before the deadline, which is July 2, set by the Agency, the Indirect Taxation Authority will announce how the system will function and what consequences it will produce, first of all, for the business community, but also for the entire system, the tax and customs system of the Indirect Taxation Authority,” said Zoran Tegeltija, director of the BiH Indirect Taxation Authority.
Some decisions have already been made. All 15,000 certificates issued so far for electronic signatures for VAT declaration and about 800 issued through the new customs transit system will be invalidated, announced Tegeltija. It is not entirely clear why the Administration decides to invalidate already issued confirmations of electronic signatures when the decision of the Personal Data Protection Agency did not order the deletion of data, which was also explained in the Agency’s announcement.
From the enacting clause of the Decision, it indisputably follows that the pronounced measures produce legal effects for the future and do not produce legal consequences for earlier procedures for issuing qualified electronic certificates.
Six days before, according to the Law on Value Added Tax, the submission of VAT returns for June begins, it is not known how taxpayers will report VAT. Consequently, it is not known how the Administration will collect about 900 million marks of the projected revenue from VAT and customs duties”, the announcement of the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“At the moment, no one can say with certainty what it will look like. Of course, from 2023, the regulations have changed – it is defined that all taxpayers submit digitally signed tax returns, and at the moment all taxpayers use this. I think that, of course, if we cannot continue to work, we will have to change certain regulations, which will most certainly be a step backwards. How much this will extend the time for submitting tax returns, no one can really say for sure at this moment,” he said. is Tegeltija.
The regulation that definitely needs to be changed is the Instruction on submitting a VAT application using a qualified electronic certificate, which was adopted by Zoran Tegeltija in July 2023. And he brought it on the basis of the Rulebook on the Implementation of the VAT Law by which the then President of the Management Board of the Administration, Vjekoslav Bevanda, prescribed that large payers of indirect taxes are obliged to submit electronic declarations using a qualified certificate from June 2023. And with that instruction, among other things, it is prescribed.
“Until the deadlines for mandatory submission of VAT returns using the qualified electronic certificate from Article 5 of this instruction apply, the Instructions on Electronic Submission of Self-Taxation Returns are applied. Article 5 of the Instructions does not prescribe the deadlines by which indirect tax payers must submit returns with an electronic signature. And according to the Instructions on Electronic Submission of Self-Taxation Returns, for a full five years before the new instruction on qualified electronic confirmation, VAT returns were also submitted electronically, but – without an electronic signature,” it is stated in Instructions on submitting VAT returns using a qualified electronic certificate.
Additionally, three days before the Decision of the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data, i.e. on June 9 this year, the Directorate for Indirect Taxation published on its website a reminder that more than two years have passed since the entry into force of the obligation to sign tax returns by means of a qualified electronic certificate, noting that the Directorate has registered taxpayers in its tax information system who do not sign declarations with an electronic signature. After we began to ask where the public panic is coming from, that the entire system of the Administration, and consequently the budgets for BiH, will collapse if there is still the possibility to submit electronic applications without an electronic signature – they deleted the announcement.
In one of the numerous conversations with the Administration for Indirect Taxation of Bosnia and Herzegovina that we had in the last few days, one of the employees – precisely on the report of electronic signatures – told us that they need about three months to return to the old system. At our persistent insistence that he answer the question of whether it is possible to submit an electronic application without an electronic signature, at one point he still said – it is technically possible. And then he asked, “Where is this conversation going?”
The conversation was supposed to lead to solutions and information for all legal entities, as well as some natural persons, who from July 1 should report to the Directorate for Indirect Taxation what they bought or sold in June so that the Directorate can calculate how much VAT they should pay – or return if they want. But the conversation led further to the official information that the Directorate for Indirect, similar to IDDEEA, will disobey the ban of the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data, which has the legal possibility to fine them up to 40 million marks, which ITA has to pay, or in the case of IDDEEA – which probably does not have that much money – up to 4% of the total annual turnover. And then the director of the Indirect Directorate came forward to finally announce that the Directorate will not play anarchy, no matter how much it is not his right due to the Agency’s decision.
“How the whole system will function will depend on the relationship of the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data towards these other issuers of qualified electronic certificates and, if they treat them as they treated the Directorate for Indirect Taxation – and I see no reason not to be like that – we will have one situation, but if they allow them to continue working unhindered, I think we will have a slightly different situation, but at this moment it is quite certainly up to the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data, not the Directorate for Indirect Taxation,” he said Tegeltia.
The other two certifiers that, in addition to the IDDEEA and the Indirect Taxation Administration, were entered into the register of qualified electronic signature certifiers by the Ministry of Transport and Communications of BiH are BH. post office and one private company. We learn that the inspection of the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data also visited those two other certifiers, but there is no basis for a ban. These are legal entities that are not state bodies, more precisely administrative organizations whose competences are prescribed by law. The laws on the Directorate for Indirect and IDDEEA do not prescribe competences for the processing of personal data with the aim of issuing qualifications for electronic signatures. And precisely the laws for administrative organizations in this sense are the same as the decision on the registration of a legal entity that can only engage in the activity for which it is registered.
