The major amendment to the tax laws, which comes into force on 1 January 2023, has attracted attention in particular due to the introduction of the windfall tax and the increase in the limit for VAT liability. But the new law adopts also several minor changes. One of them concerns the deadline for responding to a tax authority´s request to amend, supplement or confirm the information provided in the VAT control statement.
According to the current rules, if the tax authority has doubts about the accuracy or completeness of the data provided in the VAT control statement and sends a notice to the taxpayer, the taxpayer is obliged to respond within 5 working days of its delivery in the form of a subsequent VAT control statement. Failure to comply with this short deadline is sanctioned by a fine of CZK 30,000.
The amendment introduces a change concerning the deadline for submitting the subsequent VAT control statement in the case where the notice is delivered to the taxpayer’s data box. Firstly, it extends the deadline to 17 calendar days and secondly, it makes the start of the deadline dependent on the receipt in the data box, not on delivery. These two concepts must be distinguished. By the moment of receipt in a data box, the data message is made available in a particular data box and can be viewed by the addressee. However, the data message is only considered to have been delivered when the user logs in to the data box, or the fiction of delivery is applied on the tenth day after receipt.
Thus, in practice, a taxpayer that regularly collects the data box will have more time to respond to the tax authority´s request. If the taxpayer collects the data box on a daily basis, for example, the date of receipt will be the same as the date of delivery and instead of 5 working days, the taxpayer will have 17 calendar days to respond to the request. The original deadline of 5 working days will remain in cases where the message is not sent to the taxpayer’s data box. There are no changes made either to the 5-calendar-day deadline for responding to a request when a proper VAT control statement is not submitted at all or to the 5-working-day deadline for submitting a subsequent VAT control statement when the error is detected directly by the taxpayer and no request is made.
It is clear from the aforementioned that this change is beneficial especially for taxpayers who actively use the data box.
From 1 January 2023, data boxes will be automatically set up for all self-employed individuals; in this respect, the extension of the deadline for responding to the tax authority´s request can be perceived as a certain incentive for the taxpayers to actively use the data box once it has been set up.
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