A less taxing task for everyone concerned

The Ministry of Interior and Administration, along with the Finance Ministry, have agreed to free all taxpayers from the loathed obligation of filling out a tax return by the end of April. Each taxpayer will have a choice of a traditional tax return or an electronic one as early as 2008. "All the necessary data has already been sent to tax offices and transferred to the system. Now it's only a matter of processing the data," says Professor Józef Oleński from the University of Warsaw.

According to the plans of the two Ministries, tax offices will send completed tax returns to each taxpayer via the internet and will wait for their approval. The Finance Ministry assures no one will have to face prosecution if the clerks make a mistake. According to officials, the only thing that might cause problems is tax-break eligibility. The Ministry says it is working on this issue, but it is likely that taxpayers will only have to turn in some documents proving they can take advantage of them, and then the tax office will do the rest.

The Finance Ministry estimates that each year some four million of a total 22 million tax returns are filled out incorrectly. The cost of the whole project will reach zł.152.4 million but the savings are estimated at zł.180-200 million not to mention the time of both taxpayers and clerks.

The first attempt to introduce the new system was in the first half of the 1990s, but was soon forgotten. Interior Minister Ludwik Dorn says the government has come back to the idea as a result of Law and Justice's policy of a friendly state.