The country’s accountants are sounding the alarm. Impossible for them to meet the deadlines imposed by the Minister of Finance to submit tax returns before September 30. This year, he refused to grant them an extension as is usually done.
In this family firm, located in Gozée, there are three chartered accountants working hard. They are in their office seven days a week and sometimes more than twelve hours a day to file their clients’ tax returns on time. Everything must be ready before September 30, the date set this year by Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem (CD&V) to submit all tax returns.
Usually, they are granted additional time until the end of October, since the introduction in early 2002 of TAX-ON-WEB online reporting software. But this year they were denied.
Overload of tasks & shortened deadlines
In addition, this software is full of malfunctions that slow down the work of these experts. Between the bugs to connect to the platform, the impossibility of accessing certain documents and the untimely cuts, they tear their hair out and regularly have to try several times to ensure that a declaration is complete. and was successfully registered.
Mickael Leclercq explains to us that according to a count made by an accounting association in Charleroi, of which he is a member, they have lost nearly 50 working days since 2011 to register increasingly complex files. We must take into account the latest tax reforms, aid linked to COVID, European standards but also the energy crisis. In addition, they are responsible for applying the legislation to fight once morest money laundering and tax evasion.
An announcement made at a press conference
What ignited the powder, according to Marie-Dominique Jadoul, tax expert and president of the association for the defense of chartered accountants in the Charleroi region, is the method used by the Minister. He did not inform them directly. It is through a press conference which took place on April 27 that they heard the news. With this delay, it is 5 weeks less to do the same work.
She denounces a real fatigue. She and her colleagues are physically and morally exhausted and many feel a negative impact on their family life. Some have had to cancel their holidays and have no more leisure. It is thus more than 35,000 chartered accountants and their employees who have had to adapt their working hours to respond to this task in time.
In addition, it is impossible for them to recruit people to relieve them. As in other sectors, tax professionals are faced with a shortage of workforce. The job offers they publish go unanswered. Under these conditions, they fear many burnouts by the end of the year.
For the moment the Minister remains deaf to their requests.
