Property tax and other original public revenues available per click as of January 1, 2019

For more than a decade, local self-government units take care of property tax and other original public revenues, within local tax administrations. Such decentralization, which was done in a rush, under the excuse of independence of local self-governments was in fact a very bad step from the aspect of electronic records, data quality and the possibility that citizens, the economy and the state have complete information from the territory of the entire Serbia. This brought more harm than good to local governments, citizens, the economy and the state. Although the error was quickly detected, many subsequent attempts to re-integrate the data were unsuccessful. However, at the initiative of the Prime Minister, Ana Brnabić, one of the most important digitalization projects in 2018 was successfully completed - the establishment of the Unified Information System of Local Tax Administrations, which was established through intensive work by the experts from the Cabinet of the Prime Minister, the Office for IT and eGovernment, and experts from all local tax administrations.

"The transfer of data from 145 local tax administrations that have been managed since 2007 in various, incoherent information systems to the Unified Information System was not an easy task, especially given the very short deadline of only 6 months, as accuracy, completeness and regularity were demanded. However, the recipe for success of the Cabinet of the Prime Minister has been proven more than once - the commitment, persistence and unselfish work of competent experts in the field, with enormous expert support and daily monitoring of the team from the Prime Minister's Cabinet and the Office for IT and eGovernment, are a recipe for another success of eGovernment in Serbia", said Mihailo Jovanović (Associate Professor, Phd), Director of the Office for IT and eGovernment.

He added that the new Unified Information System, which is located in the State Data Center, by centralizing the data to citizens and the economy, enables the local tax administration to see all of its tax obligations on the territory of the Republic of Serbia on the portal of the Unified Information System of LTA, and submit an application for assessment of property tax electronically. The convenience of electronic filing of an application for determining property tax will in particular benefit legal entities who must repeat this procedure every year. As of February, the electronic tax payment service will be available on the portal.

"Although centralized, this kind of data processing will not impair the specificity and autonomy of local administrations, but will provide them with better monitoring and timely updating of records. Also, the Ministry of Finance and the Tax Administration will have a complete electronic insight into the local tax analysis of all 4,803,275 individuals, 208,278 legal entities and 265,193 entrepreneurs in the Republic of Serbia", Jovanović said.

In the past 6 months, the Office for IT and eGovernment has successfully established a Unified Information System in the State Data Center by using, among other things, the capacities of the State Oracle Cloud System and has built up the necessary telecommunication infrastructure for each of the 145 local tax administrations, which secured the level of reliability and safety of processing and use of data, as well as the overall operation of the entire tax administration of Serbia. Employees in local tax administrations have migrated data and have undergone intensive training to work in the new system. Local tax administrations that have worked in obsolete systems, moving to a new system means faster, more precise and complete work, as well as better collection of original public revenues.

Finally, this project is only one link in the implementation of a comprehensive arrangement of the eGovernment system, which will contribute to a faster and better quality cadastral reform, i.e. the complete digitalization of the procedure of verification of contracts by notaries for the sale of real estate, registration in the real estate cadastre, automatic submission of tax returns and for the transfer of absolute rights, as well as for property tax.