The expansion of the EET, the Czech acronym for the electronic transaction declaration system, moves forward in May. The take for 2020 is calculated to bring in 15.2 billion Crowns, 2.3 billion Crowns from the May additions. Then the government expects linear growth in 2021 19.2 Billion Crowns and in 2022 20.5 billion Crowns. These estimates are up impressively from 2019’s estimated collections of 12.8 billion Crowns. This can only mean one thing: more efficient collection of the VAT.
The May expansion will take on the service sector with lawyers, accountants, taxi drivers and construction workers being examples of services which will need to register each transaction electronically. With this great dragnet of tax collection will also come some VAT rate adjustments. From the current 21% level many things will fall to the 15% VAT level. These things include repairing items such as clothes, shoes, and bikes. Additionally haircuts, cleaning and food services, homecare personnel, and most importantly draught beer. Another change is that a few items will go from the 21% level to a 10% level like electronic books and audiobooks, which most people probably download outside of the VAT dragnet anyhow.
Several political parties are not happy with the fairness of the system that everyone must pay taxes, or shoulder the burden of paying CZK 8000 for an EET software/printer package. ODS and the Pirates want to take the changes to court. ODS promises that if they get elected they will drop the whole EET law. Alena Shillerova (ANO) said that nobody will ever revoke the EET as it lays the foundation of effective tax collections and equal opportunity for all businesses.
There are tens fo thousands of controls every year and Schillerova said the average fine for non-compliance was CZK 10,627. The highest was 400,000CZK.
