Deputy Ombudsman Maija Sakslin has issued several decisions on the delay in processing claims in the Tax Administration.
Parliamentary Deputy Ombudsman Maija Sakslin has issued a remark to the Tax Administration regarding the excessive processing time of taxpayers’ rectification claims.
Sakslin has assessed several complaints about the delay in processing claims for personal customers by the Tax Administration.
The tax administration received a reprimand for unlawful negligence in a case where the complainant’s redress claims had been pending before the Tax Administration’s Personal Taxation Unit and the Tax Adjustment Board for a total of more than two years without active action.
In the Board of Appeal alone, the claim for rectification was nine months without action.
“Although According to the Board of Appeal, it was awaiting an effective administrative decision, the Deputy Ombudsman could not accept the fact that in a case that had been pending for an unreasonably long time, the Board of Appeal did not return the case for preparation until nine months later, ”the Deputy Ombudsman said in his statement.
The claim for redress was of financial importance to the complainant, as the total amount added to his taxable income was approximately EUR 430 000.
In his decision, the Deputy Ombudsman found that the handling of the complainant’s claims by the Tax Administration did not fulfill the constitutional right to have his case dealt with properly and without undue delay.
In the second in the complaint, the Tax Administration processed the claim for rectification for more than 20 months, even though the authority had estimated the processing time to be 12 months.
The claim for an adjustment related to an amount the estimated amount of which corresponded to the complainant’s salary for several years.
Although the Tax Administration regretted the time taken to process the complainant’s complaint, the Deputy Ombudsman considered in his decision that the time taken did not respect the constitutional right to a proper and undue delay and was therefore unlawful.
In the other complaints under review by the Deputy Ombudsman, the time taken to deal with redress was 19, 17 and 16 months. These claims were dealt with by both the Personal Taxation Unit and the Board of Appeal below the one-year processing time target, but their total processing times were, in the Deputy Ombudsman’s view, unreasonably long.
Tax administration has already provided more staff to deal with redress claims, according to a report from the Deputy Ombudsman.
During the current year, the tax administration aims to process personal tax adjustment claims on average within approximately 250 days of their receipt.
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