The pace of submitting income and social tax returns (TSD) has so far been as usual. To date, nearly 76,000 businesses required to submit the TSD form to the ETCB have done so. Data submission is ongoing.
The results from the first month show a significant change in the way data is transmitted. 17% of those who have submitted their tax returns have sent data to the ETCB directly from their accounting software – this is almost three times as many as the number of businesses that previously used automated solutions.
According to Madis Laas, Head of the ETCB's Income Tax Department, this is a major fundamental change in tax reporting. Whereas businesses previously submitted tax declarations to the ETCB, they now transmit data directly from their accounting systems. Both tax and statistical data are submitted to the state at the same time.
“The main aim of the new system is to enable businesses to enter data once, in one place, within their business or accounting software. We can see that for those businesses that have submitted their data to us directly from their accounting software, the transition has generally been smooth. This process is automated and allows for ongoing data verification and more efficient processing without excessive manual work,” said Madis Laas.
Accountants, software developers, and public sector partners were all involved in the development of the new solution, including providing feedback on and testing the prototype. “Feedback from accountants remains very important to us. We realise that the transition to the new system has been more complicated than expected for some accountants. Most of the technical issues have now been resolved. We are analysing the feedback and assessing ways to improve the solution,” stated Laas.
How much time the new solution saves depends largely on a company’s working arrangements, the volume of payments, and the software used. For a business with just one or two employees, the change may not immediately lead to noticeable time savings, particularly if data is entered manually in e-MTA. For larger companies and accountancy offices serving many clients, automation reduces the need for repetitive manual work significantly.
Data-based tax reporting is part of the national real-time economy programme, led by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications. The aim is to move, step by step, towards eliminating the need for businesses to repeatedly compile and transmit already existing data to the state. This reduces the administrative burden on businesses. With data-based reporting, the required information is entered into a company’s business software once, and it can then be used in a standardised format to fulfil various reporting obligations and for submission to various state agencies.
Read more about data-based TSD: emta.ee/apa-tsd.
