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May 12, 2009

The civil servants at SPF Finances are better prepared for the next tax declaration thanks to ...

For the first time, the civil servants of SPF Finances are to be able to process all the 2008 tax declarations using an important number of ICT systems. Some applications such as TAXI, Calculatrix and BOW had of course already been developed and put in service last year, but these applications will now be used for the first time on a large scale. The software systems enable the civil servants to process the data more quickly and more accurately, avoiding a considerable amount of task duplication, thanks for example to a direct link with the Belgian welfare offices.
These innovations are being introduced within the framework of a 6 year contract that SPF Finances signed at the start of 2007 with the IT-enabled company Steria. Other important innovations may therefore be envisaged for the years ahead. This long-term contract is intended to totally replace the old software system of SPF Finances which is now 22 years old.
 
Those who submit their declaration form (just) in time to the Finance Ministry ought to know that from this year a whole range of technical initiatives will facilitate the processing of their declarations by the inland revenue civil servants. What happens once the brown envelope containing the filled-in declaration has been placed in the letter box of SPF Finances or the electronic declaration has been submitted via Tax-On-Web? Here is a little glimpse of what is going on behind the scenes …
 
TAXI for declarations
The tax-paying citizen can choose to submit his or her declaration on paper or electronically via Tax-On-Web. The data from electronic declarations and scanned paper declarations (via Scanfin) can be consulted by the authorised civil servants and processed using TAXI. This is an application, developed by the IT services company Steria, which manages and processes tax information. For SPF Finances, this is the number one application for processing declarations, allocating them and informing the tax payer of the correct amount of tax.
 
In other words, thanks to TAXI, the declarations are now processed automatically instead of manually. In TAXI, the inland revenue civil servants are informed if some of the figures on the declaration do not “add up”. Thanks to this innovative application, only scanned declarations that are illegible and declarations with conflicting figures have to be checked manually by the inland revenue civil servants. The civil servants' work becomes more efficient: they can better organise their work and detect any fraudulent actions more easily. The tax payers also receive their tax calculation more quickly.
 
Calculatrix for calculations
The data processed by TAXI is then transferred to Calculatrix – this model, also developed by Steria, calculates the tax or the amount to be reimbursed. Patrick Martens, BU Manager, Business Transformation Services at Steria, states: “Calculatrix takes into account the most recent legal provisions for calculating the tax. The innovative structure of Calculatrix also considerably facilitates the maintenance of the application, and any adaptations to be made in line with any new legislation can be carried out more simply and quickly. New in 2009: for those who submit their declaration electronically, the online simulation of the tax to be paid or the amount to be reimbursed is made available as soon as the first tax declaration forms are sent – from 21st April – ie a month earlier than last year.”
 
No task duplication thanks to BOW
This year the classic paper declaration has changed its look. The codes that correspond to income and expenditure are not pre-printed. Faced with the paper version, there is now Tax-On-Web. For the online declaration, a lot of information is filled-in in advance and the system points out any errors. On Tax-On-Web, for example, the codes are indeed filled-in, as are any amounts that the inland revenue already knows about, such as salary, tax deductable donations and pension plan premiums. This is done via the application BOW (Belcotax-On-Web) developed by Steria, and which automatically displays in Tax-On-Web or in TAXI information provided by the welfare offices and on benefits.
 
What does Steria do at SPF Finances?
Louis Collet, ICT Manager of SPF Finances explains: “As part of the modernisation project of SPF Finances, Steria has designed an integrated system to calculate and record the tax of natural persons, including the above-mentioned applications Belcotax-On-Web, TAXI and Calculatrix. The system was set up for the first time for the requirements of the 2007 tax year (so in 2008).” This new application, which is updated annually, considerably simplifies the work of the civil service.