Any submission to the tax authority, meaning an action done by a person partaking in tax administration towards the tax authorities, must be done in compliance with the requirements of statutory regulation. If the opposite is the case, the incorrect submission may cause severe negative consequences to the tax subject, namely financial sanctions for non-submission of a tax return, pronouncing the VAT payer unreliable, or – in extreme cases – determination of tax duty as per the tools available to the tax authorities.

An incorrect submission is a submission which the tax authorities deem incomplete, unclear or vague. The deficiencies must be so strong that due to their existence the tax return cannot initiate the expected effect in terms of tax administration, tax proceedings cannot be commenced or continued.

Incomplete submission

Th submission is deemed complete only when it contains all elemental requisites stipulated by the Tax Code, specifically: who is making the submission, what is the reason and what is the proposal. An example of an error is the absence of information about what the tax subject is claiming, or a situation in which the submission provides no leads as to what rights or obligations of the submitting party are in question. On the other hand, obvious mistakes such as those in writing or counting are not considered errors, as long as they do not make the submission unclear.

Unclear submission

From the content point of view, an unclear submission is one in which the formulations used by the submitting party do not make possible the inference of whether it contains the key requisites, or else which of the requisites are stated in it. An unclear submission can also be such that is done in an inappropriate form, e.g. in the wrong language, unreadable format of a data message, on an unsuitable data carrier, etc.

Vague submission

If the contents of the submission are not expressed clearly and accurately, and this leads to contradictions within it, it is considered vague. If there is a logical contradiction between the stated information, a state of legal uncertainty arises and must be immediately eliminated, otherwise the next proceedings might not be conducted in compliance with the volition of the submitting party. An error, made by the submitting party upon stating information, does not have legal relevance from the point of view of assessment. What is relevant is anything that the tax subject stated in the submission in a clear and comprehensible manner regardless of whether he acted erroneously or not.

An ineffective submission does not bring about any legal effect and is viewed by the tax authorities as if it was not made at all. Thus, after some time the tax administration can surprise the tax subject with a formal notice asking for a tax return submission, even though the subject has submitted it in time. The formal notice oftentimes comes with a fine for late tax return submission or for late submission of a control statement. It should include instructions about how the necessary corrections should be done, i.e. a short manual for remedying the mistakes and information about consequences which will occur should these mistakes not be remedied.

If the tax subjects make a submission with errors which make it unfit for debate or with mistakes due to which the submission cannot have the expected effect in terms of tax administration, the tax authorities will – in accordance with the Tax Code – ask the person who made the submission to remedy these mistakes in a given time period. If the tax subject corrects the submission within the given time period and based on the provided instructions, the submission is viewed as if it was made correctly and in time, i.e. the moment of submission is still the original day of submission. Should the mistakes not be remedied within the time period stated in the notice, the submission becomes ineffective after that period ends. A repeated submission (without mistakes) made after the deadline stated by tax authorities is viewed as a new, completely individual submission made on the day when it was provided by the tax subject. Such a case is not a case of mistake remedy.

The Tax Code stipulates a special rule for a mistake which is only the fact that the submission was done in some other way than electronically, although it was supposed to be done electronically by the tax subject. In some defined cases, such submission is viewed as error free. This rule is applicable only to those types of submission for which the tax authorities make this fact public in a way allowing for remote access. These submissions include for example:

• Statements of personal income tax from employment, with the exception stated by the Act on Income Tax,
• Statements of tax collected by withholding according to the special tax rate of personal or corporate income tax,
• Tax returns for corporate income tax,
• Tax returns for value added tax (only those made by a non-payer and submissions made by an identified person),
• Road tax returns,
• Registration forms for natural persons,
• Registration forms for legal persons,
• Registration forms for VAT purposes,
• Notification of a change of registration information,
• Appeal for registration cancellation.

This article brings information about some problem situations which may arise in practice due to an ineffective submission of a tax return. In the interest of lowering the risk of ineffective tax return submission and of avoiding these situations, the tax subject should pay extra attention to the archiving of the confirmation of tax return submission as a means of proof. In accordance with the Tax Code, the tax subject also has the right to ask the tax authorities for a confirmation of a submission made in writing or via a data message, or make use of a data information box and actively monitor acceptances of individual documents made by the tax authorities and their processing, too.

Soňa Hanigovská & Jan Tahal