Taxation and customs services need to be customer- oriented – this is the message sent from the kick-off event of the two-year EU twinning project `Further harmonization with EU practices and Acquis on customs and taxation`, which has an aim to support further development of Indirect Taxation Authority of Bosnia and Herzegovina according to the European standards.
`Modernization of the Indirect Taxation Authority also needs to include the change of mentality of the institution in a sense to move towards trade facilitation and orientation of the Indirect Taxation Authority towards customers is one of very important elements,`said Karel De Greve, representative of the Taxation and Customs Union in the Directorate-General of the European Commission.
Continuing the process of harmonization of good practice and legislation in BiH with the EU in the area of indirect taxes means continuing the harmonization of laws in the area of customs, value added taxes and excises in BiH with laws and directives of the EU, further simplification of customs procedures, improved cooperation between customs and trade, improved efficiency of post clearance audits, modernization of IT systems, trainings of ITA officials and improved Human Resources Management, successful fight regarding counterfeit goods, and improving the system of internal audit and risk analyses.
`The work will be done on the amendments of legislation regulating value added taxes, excises and custom procedures, improving the capacity of IT sector etc. The ITA is going to be one level higher in the sense of legislation harmonization with the EU and this project will also enable us to rise one level higher in the sense of organization and professionalism in our everyday work`, said Miro Dzakula, Director of the BiH Indirect Taxation Authority.
European Union funded this project in amount of 2,000,000.00 EUR from Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA 2011). It will be implemented by the Agency for European Integration and Economic Development (AEI) of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance, in cooperation with Slovenian Ministry of Finance – Customs Administration of Republic of Slovenia.
`Customs can be an obstacle for the trade, but if it is a developed customs that works by modern procedures, it can be supportive of trade and those are customs systems that we would like to have in BiH and Slovenia`, said Rajko Skubic, general manager of Taxation Authority of Slovenia.
New project is the continuing the work that was successfully completed in December 2012 througha two-year twinning project ` Support for the Indirect Taxation Authority of BiH in further harmonization with EU legislation`, funded by the European Union finances in amount of 2,375,000 EUR from IPA programme 2008. The most important results of the project that ended in late 2012 were Strategy of the BiH Indirect Taxation Authority 2012-2016, new draft of the BiH Law on customs politics and upgraded IT systems.
