Your e-PIT

Countries

Poland

Policy areas

Organisation name Ministry of Finance, National Revenue Administration, Poland

Contact person: Katarzyna Dejer

katarzyna.dejer@mf.gov.pl

The project is a perfect example of designing and providing modern public services and can be treated as a trigger for change in this area. The new e-service, Your e-PIT, is the only service of this kind not only in the National Revenue Administration (NRA), but in the whole Polish public administration. It allows taxpayers to settle accounts with NRA in the most convenient way for them. Thanks to reuse of collected data in several separate public databases, a taxpayer needs to take only a few on-screen actions and about 10 minutes to comply with tax obligations, which required much more effort before implementing the Your e-PIT project.

The service can be used in any part of the world via different mobile devices with Android, iOS or WinPhone. At the same time, the requirements for high quality and the cost-effectiveness of the service are met.

The general objectives of the project were to improve the satisfaction of NRA clients and better use the resources held by the ministry and other public entities. At the same time, the project also aimed to establish cooperation with stakeholders and ensure stable revenues to the state budget.

Additionally, the project was consistent with medium-term strategic goals both at the national and organisation level.

1) Governmental Strategy for Responsible Development for the period up to 2020, with Specific Objective III: Effective state and economic institutions contributing to growth as well as social and economic inclusion, under which improved functioning of the administration, decreased costs of services, as well as stable, effective and sustainable public finance is foreseen. The strategy pointed out that, among others, the increase in revenues through the improved execution of taxes is necessary. At the same time, the strategy indicates as the key values offered to citizens the public administration clients availability, a modern nature, usefulness and high quality of the delivered services.

2) Directions of Operation and Development of the National Revenue Administration for 20172020, including:

  1. supporting individual taxpayers and businesses in their compliance with tax and customs obligations, measured by an increase in the level of customer satisfaction;
  2. collection of tax and non-tax liabilities of the state budget by tax and customs authorities with a specific goal focusing on growth of efficiency and effectiveness of collection of tax and non-tax liabilities;
  3. modern IT, enabling modern customer service.

3) Directions of Operation and Development of Ministry of Finance (MF) for 20172020.

  1. tightening the tax system;
  2. increasing knowledge and shaping the desired attitudes of the society in finance and tax compliance;
  3. increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the tasks performed by employees of MF.

Summarising, implementation of Your e-PIT service has contributed directly or indirectly to the achievement of the above-mentioned medium-term objectives. Already, after two months from the implementation, 4.1 million taxpayers benefitted from the Your e-PIT service, that is 20% of the eligible group (status on 24 of April 2019). The time spent on annual tax settlement has been shortened on average from 20 minutes in the case of using electronical documents (applied before launching Your e-PIT service) or 60 minutes in the case of preparing a paper version of the settlement to 10 minutes.

Additionally, the Your e-PIT service is valued highly by taxpayers. The latest results of the polls indicate that 90% of taxpayers who filed a tax return PIT for 2018 using Your e-PIT service, assessed the service (definitely or rather) positively. The login system for the Your e-PIT service is perceived as safe by 93% of respondents. By using Your e-PIT services, 38% of taxpayers accepted a tax return prepared by NRA without making any changes to it; 35% changed part of the data, and every fifth taxpayer (20%) rejected the PIT annual tax return prepared by NRA. Around 7% of respondents admitted that they did nothing – so the PIT annual tax return will remain accepted and submitted by the taxpayer on 30 April this year 2019, when the settlement period is over. Some 90% of respondents assessed Your e-PIT service as user-friendly and transparent.

IT services subordinated to the Ministry of Finance (MF) will ensure the maintenance of the new e-service. MF has an appropriate number of IT staff as well as experts with high skills and knowledge required in IT systems and e-services administration and management. Financing will be provided in MF’s annual budgets. Additionally, as further development of the service is planned, currently new work is being carried out and taxpayers with a business (PIT-36, 36L and 28) will be able to benefit from Your e-PIT service in 2020 (4.7 million additional eligible taxpayers).

The project can be an example of good practice while designing public e-services of varying scope at both national and regional levels of public administration. For this reason, the solution can be treated as an universal one to be adapted for different applications – taxes, social insurance contributions or other public services requiring the gathering of comprehensive information to satisfy clients. So the main lesson from the project to be learnt by the others is how to put in practice the idea of data reuse, which is a huge amount collected in the public sector. The project is a practical example how data collected so far in separate registers can be used – thanks to IT technology – to new purposes, improving the quality and effectiveness of public services delivery.

The other lesson that may be helpful to other public entities is how to design the e-service itself, including easy access to the application and the interface of the service, and providing simplicity and usability adjusted to a very diverse group of end-users – also, in terms of IT competences, that are taxpayers.

During the project realisation a number of activities were undertaken to engage and communicate with wide range of stakeholders. Since the project required changes to the Act on personal income tax and other legal provisions, the draft law changes were widely consulted as part of public consultations, thanks to which all parties could present their comments and conclusions.

Cooperation with some stakeholders was particularly important, for instance with NGOs conducting public benefit activity. In the annual tax statement prepared by NRA, an organisation of public benefit that the taxpayer gave 1% of the tax to in the previous year, is automatically indicated. To change the organisation, the taxpayer must log in to the service and then make the appropriate changes.

Before the service was launched, consultations were conducted and cooperation was established with an NGO (Klon/Jawor Association) which gathers and makes available knowledge about public benefit organisations from all over Poland. Together with the NGO, Ministry of Finance organised a webinar on the 1% donation within the Your e-PIT service.

Additionally, activities to satisfy the informational and educational needs of different citizen groups were undertaken. Since the service was launched, a nationwide campaign about the e-service has been conducted; through varied communication channels, the campaign reached different groups of recipients.

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