MY TAXES and DIS+

MY TAXES and DIS+

In March, the financial administration launched the MY TAXES portal – a platform that also includes the so-called online tax office and a new tax information box (DIS+). This portal is intended to simplify and streamline the interaction of taxpayers with the tax office. Taxpayers using its services can communicate with the tax office through this portal, file tax returns, use the options of the tax calendar, which monitors all deadlines, or check the status of payments and balances of individual tax accounts. All in one place without having to visit the tax office physically. The individual forms are interactive and already pre-filled with the taxpayer's personal data, which should reduce the frequency of formal errors on tax forms. A great novelty is also the possibility to entrust the administration of tax accounts to third parties, such as accountants or tax advisors. The scope of credentials can be easily set directly in the portal.

Another novelty is that it is no longer necessary to have a data box set up for online communication with the tax office. You can log in to the portal with a wide range of verification methods, e.g. bank identity, e-national identity card, eGovernment Mobile Key, access data assigned by the Financial Administration of the Czech Republic or just by logging in to the data box. For example, banking identity was automatically acquired in 2021 by all clients of many leading Czech banks using online banking or smart banking.

One of the most important things for companies is the new tax information box. The existing DIS will be available only until 28 February 2022; from this date it will not be possible to log in to it and it will be possible to work only within DIS+. If a legal entity wants to set up DIS+, its statutory body must set up access to the MY TAXES portal and activate DIS+. If interested, it can then entrust access to DIS+ to other entities. The "entrusted" tax information boxes will appear in their own profile, so they can access them by logging in to the portal. Statutory bodies of companies log in to the portal in the same way as natural persons – by means of the individual identities and approaches already mentioned above. As such, a legal entity cannot log in to the portal – it must always be a natural person (statutory body) who logs in with their own identity.

In practice, we have not yet experienced major problems with the registration and activation of DIS+ in Czech entities (or in entities whose statutory bodies are natural persons residing in the Czech Republic). However, we have already encountered problems with foreign entities that only have a VAT registration here and want to have a tax information box set up. Until now, a power of attorney was enough to set up the old tax information box, and a tax advisor could set up and operate a DIS with the tax administrator. However, it is now necessary for the statutory body of a foreign company (e.g. an executive director) to set up access to the MY TAXES portal and then authorise the relevant tax advisor (or other entity) to access its DIS+. For an executive director to be able to access the portal, they need to use one of the authentication methods. Some forms of e-identity (such as bank identity or International ID Gateway) can also be used by foreign persons, but their use is very limited (this only applies to some banks, and therefore some countries). Without a data box or e-identity, the only way left is to set up access to the portal – with access data assigned by the Financial Administration of the Czech Republic. This method works as follows: the applicant requests access data to the system. Then the generated username is sent to them and subsequently they must physically go to any branch of the tax office, where they will be identified. Some foreign entities will not be allowed to set up access to the portal remotely.

The employees of the tax authorities are aware of this and have told us unofficially that, regrettably, this is a situation which the legislation did not intend, but which is in fact quite common. The current practice, therefore, is as follows: the foreign natural person is asked for access data and then, instead of physically identifying themselves at the tax administrator's branch, an identity card scan is sent to an employee of the relevant tax office, who identifies them "remotely". Unfortunately, this method does not conform to the legislation, but so far it is the only one that can avoid the need to visit the Czech authorities physically.