Mass Disclosure Of Personal Data To Tax Authorities' Super Base Prepared In Belarus

What data will go there?

Belarus is going to launch a "superbase" of personal income from 2023. It envisages that employers will provide tax officials with information on all incomes of their employees. The data on the money incomes of the individuals have to be submitted to the special database. This innovation is envisaged by the new Tax Code updated on January 1. The Tax Ministry has provided details of this innovation.

What kind of base are we talking about?

From January 1, 2023, tax agents, that is, employers, will have to provide tax information on all income of employees. This includes benefits and personal income tax amounts. An exception will be made only for income from prizes (returned stakes not played), as well as information relating to state secrets or banking secrets.

Such information will be provided by employers in electronic form.

The zerkalo.io journalist, as an individual, called the direct telephone line of the Ministry of Taxes and Levies, which was held by the head of the ministry, Siarhei Nalivaika. The Minister, among other things, explained the purpose of introducing the so-called "super base" of personal income, what information the tax authorities lack now in order to correlate the income and expenditure of the population.

- Personal income base is an additional advantage for the law-abiding citizen, working legally. As of today, we have enough sources from which we get information. But nevertheless there are moments that we do not see. Sometimes we have to ask a citizen, - said Siarhei Nalivaika. - Figuratively speaking, we see a citizen's purchase of real estate, but we do not see the income, according to the databases, it is not there. We start to find out, but the person says that he has received dividends, something else. We start to check all this, and it turns out that we have bothered the person for nothing, let's say.

Now the tax authorities have the following information on the income of the population. The Ministry of Taxes and Levies has a database of personal income records. Among other things, they have information on contributions to the Social Security Fund, pensions, benefits, scholarships, sick pay, transfers from abroad and many other payments. This information goes to the Ministry of Taxes and Levies for the database of the automated information system of recording the income of individuals.

According to the Minister, "when this base is introduced, it is assumed that all information will be aggregated there without any gaps, without any exceptions.

- Interaction with information resources will be organized in a slightly different way. If now, let's say, we get the lion's share of information from the social security fund, and it is not the level of wages, but we see the amount of contributions to the wage fund and we calculate what is the sum of wages. So here the employer will show all the income. Especially since we have such cases when the income is paid in goods, it will also be reflected. And the payments of dividends, some other things. The employer will record all these things in this base.

Among other pluses of the income "superbase", the minister calls the fact that the tax office will not "unnecessarily bother the population".

- We are trying to organize the information base in such a way that not to bother a law-abiding person unnecessarily. So those who are working legally have absolutely nothing to fear. They will not be affected in any way from the point of view of their behavioural model. On the contrary, all of his income, even those not yet reflected in the database, will be visible. We can see the expenses anyway. It will be the income that will be visible. Nothing changes at all for the citizen, there should not be any concerns. The very mechanism of comparing income and spending will not change.