Azerbaijan, Baku, June 9 /Trend, I.Khalilova/
The contacts of taxpayers with the tax authorities will be brought to minimum as part of improvements in tax administration and modernization of the tax system in Azerbaijan, Deputy Minister of Taxes Sahib Alekperov said at a roundtable on the theme "The services provided by the Ministry of Taxes to protect the rights of entrepreneurs".
"Amongst the CIS countries, Azerbaijan has first established a structure to serve the taxpayers, said Alekperov. - At the same time, for the number of employees in the tax authorities, Azerbaijan have the lowest rate compared with European and the CIS countries."
After the online services were introduced in the tax authorities, the number of employees was reduced to little more than 2,000. Terminals are established in the country to serve the taxpayers in remote areas, and currently their number has 27 (10 of them were put into operation this year) and ten more terminals are in the construction process.
"By 2013 their number across the country will be increased to 55, the deputy minister said. - In the future, their scope can be expanded. In addition to contact with tax authorities, the terminals can be used to get answers to their questions related to other state agencies."
The head of taxpayers service department Elchin Mammadov said in the near future there are plans to introduce a video message service in the computer terminals that will enable appeal to the heads of tax offices in the specified time, not coming to the ministry.
"Today most of the complaints are related to tax audits. And this is natural, since the tax authorities carry out an inspection under tax audit and operational controls to ensure the payment of taxes," said the deputy minister.
However, he said, in future the number of field tax audits will be reduced to minimum, it would be possible with the beginning of the electronic audit.
"This will enable to conduct an audit of the taxpayers, not going to the object of audit," said Alekperov.
Prior to that, the tax law should be amended accordingly, he said.