CEF Courses Help Overcome Complex Tax Issues
Mr. Fatos Bunjaku works as a VAT Advisor at the Tax Administration of Kosovo and believes in importance of continuous learning. This motivates him to regularly attend different available learning opportunities to stay up to date on ways to apply modern methods in improving the tax situation in his country, particularly in the area of VAT. In late September he joined us at the online course where we addressed ways of strengthening domestic revenue mobilization (DRM). We are happy to share his thought on course proceedings, which aspects he found most useful and why.
"Tax administration in our country is relatively new compared to tax administrations in other countries and we are still consolidating tax legislation and tax procedures, aligning them with EU tax legislation. Although we are constantly careful in the tax education of taxpayers, there is still a tax gap caused by the informal economy.
I found this course a very productive experience and I appreciated learning from international experts as well as other fellow participants about ways to improve tax collection and reduce the scope of the gray economy, increase tax compliance, and strengthen international cooperation regarding tax matters.
I think that our lecturers for the occasion also gave us the best possible professional opinions on how to deal with and overcome the difficult economic and social situation caused by the current pandemic. We agreed that the COVID-19 pandemic has put an increasing strain on tax revenues and there is a great need for fiscal policy reforms to make our tax systems stronger. International cooperation helps develop and disseminate new thinking to help developing countries improve DMR.
I found it useful to learn from the Dutch example of how they carry out supervision and enforcement duties based on their compliance risk management strategy. Learning about their efforts how they try to influence the behavior of citizens and businesses in such a way that they comply with the tax laws and regulations according to the principle "each citizen and for each business to get the treatment they deserve" was also very interesting. In the Tax Administration of Kosovo, we are developing the system of information processing from various sources, in order to build an effective system of Risk Analysis. Therefore, this lecture about Dutch practices is going to help us when we move forward with the practical implementation and alignment of our system with established good international practices.
Many thanks to the CEF staff for the excellent organization and special care they have given us during the continuation of this course. I think that after this course I will be at a higher level of professional development and I motivated to apply some of the lessons learned in our regular work processes. Based on my past experience with CEF courses, I am confident that also shared knowledge and exchanged experiences will help me give professional explanations for overcoming complex tax situations and apply them in our tax legislation."