Joint Meeting of the Eco-Officers Network and the SCTM Network of LTA

A joint meeting of the SCTM Network of Eco-Officers and Heads of Local Tax Administrations was held on 12 July 2019 the Sava Center. The topic of the meeting was the presentation of three regulations that operationalize the introduction of a new method of calculating the Fee for Protection and Improvement of the Environment, which is prescribed by the Law on Fees for the Use of Public Goods.

The reasons for the introduction of the new Fee were presented to the participants of the meeting, and the new basis for its calculation was explained. The new Fee for Protection and Improvement of the Environment is essentially the cost for pollution by its essence and method of calculation, which largely changes the nature of this fee, its scope, and the method of calculation.

Participants of the meeting repeatedly expressed their disagreement with the way this fee was prescribed, starting from the law, to the rules themselves. The most important result of non-inclusion of LTA in the adoption of regulations is the inconsistency between the regulations themselves and the terminology used, the incompatibility with the existing tax administration system and the regulations governing this system, the lack of databases for proposed solutions, without an adequate proposal how to reach the necessary data.

The biggest complaint and the unknown was that the payment of fees under old regulations was terminated at the end of February 2019, and the application of the new one is delayed for several months. This lack of resources is irreplaceable for local budgets.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection was represented by Branislav Atanaskovic, Secretary of the Ministry and Zoran Ibrovic, Head of the Department for harmonization of regulations with the EU in the field of environment. Agency for Environmental Protection was represented by Filip Radovic, Director of the Agency, and the National Pollution Source Registry was represented by Nenad Redzic, Manager. They invited participants to submit proposals for the improvement of these by-laws in writing, in order to ensure efficiency in the application of the proposed regulations, which are already being applied as standard in more than 100 countries.

The Ministry, the Agency and the SCTM suggested that from September five regional workshops could be organized in which small groups will discuss the specific problems that LTA encounters in the implementation of the presented regulations. Until then, it was proposed that LTA, together with the environmental departments, prepare the records of business entities and entrepreneurs to whom the fee relates and for which it can be prescribed. The problem of prescribing Fees for individuals is evident, as there is no single proposal that could be used for individuals as a database. Proposals were from voter lists, to records of taxpayers of various types of taxes and contributions that already exist as unique bases. In the further development of the establishment of a system for determining and collecting fees, it is necessary to include the Ministry of Finance, Office for Information Technologies and Electronic Administration, and the Mihajlo Pupin Institute, which is IT support for the development of LTA.

 SCTM implemented this activity as part of the project "Institutional Support to SCTM - Third Phase", supported by the Government of Switzerland.