On June 27, a meeting with representatives of the International Monetary Fund mission on tax administration issues, led by Peter Barrand, a deputy head in the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department, was held at the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Uzbekistan.
The main purpose of the mission’s visit to Uzbekistan is to conduct an analysis of organization of activities and methods used by the State Tax Service bodies for completeness of taxpayers’ records, collection of taxes and mandatory payments, the use of information technology in the collection process, as well as mechanisms of ensuring compliance with tax legislation by taxpayers.
At the meeting, the sides discussed the forthcoming tasks of the mission, issues related to ensuring timeliness of registration, ensuring the completeness of payment of taxes, as well as the integrity of the database, which is a key factor in reliability and accuracy of the source data of tax agents.
At the meeting, it was noted that the lack of separate powers of tax authorities does not allow taking full control over the completeness of tax payments, but their provision requires the upgrading of qualifications of inspectors. Problems of ensuring the reliability of presented information, timeliness of their comparison with other information available to the tax authorities, as well as further ways to modernize the system for exchanging data and comparing tax information were also discussed.
According to the Ministry of Finance, the mission of the International Monetary Fund expressed its readiness to assist in development of a roadmap for further improvement of the organization of activities of tax authorities following a two-week review of their activities.
