A deepened technological communication between AGT and Tax Payers
In July of 2019 it will start in Angola the VAT regime.
Considering the documental formalities required by the VAT system, it will be approved a new Legal Regime of Invoices and Equivalent Documents.
The highlight of this Regime is related with the obligation of Tax Payers with a turn over higher than 250.000 USD of using validated billing systems.
Additionally, it will be approved the Legal Regime of the Electronic Communication regarding Tax Payers’ Accounting and Billing Elements.
It will be mandatory for the Tax Payers to produce a standard file (SAF-T (AO)) related to the elements of Billing, Accounting and Inventory.
Billing systems validation
A validated billing system is based on four aspects:
- Fulfilling of the applicable rules on physical/electronic documents;
- Application controls for instance, which prevent unexpected data manipulation of relevant tax data or that enforce the user authentication in the system;
- Creation of a unique code (Hash) for each document, which enables the identification of unexpected changes in documents’ data;
- To be able to extract the SAF-T (AO) file.
"Times are changing on the Angolan tax system which will by itself imply the fulfilling of new fiscal obligations."
The SAF-T (AO) is a standard file in XML format, which must be exported from the accounting, billing and logistic systems for a specific fiscal period. It can be either partial or complete annual file (maximum of one fiscal year).
The Tax Payers should communicate to the AGT the files regarding Sales and Purchases related with operations performed on the previous month, until day 20 of the following month.
This communication may be performed using different channels, through the upload of the SAF-T (AO) at the AGT web portal, web service or other.
During 2019 the Legal Regime of the Electronic Communication of the Accounting and Billing Elements is mandatory for the Major Tax Payers and it is voluntary for other Tax Payers with turnover or imports higher than 50.000.000 Kz.
Starting on 2020, the obligation is extended to Tax Payers with turnover or imports higher than 50.000.000 Kz.
It is undeniable that the standardization of the accounting and billing information will be a big step in the Angola tax system, as it will simplify the interaction between the AGT and Tax Payers.
Nevertheless, its implementation will trigger several questions, such as:
· Am I required to validate the billing system that I use?
· What if I use a software developed by my own company?
· In case my software supplier does not comply with required validation, may I incur in penalties?
· My system extracts the SAF-T (AO) file. Does it means that its information reflects my business reality?
· The documents codes (Hash), issued in my system, are valid?
· What if I cannot communicate in the last day the SAF-T (AO), due to unavailable network or a system failure?
PwC is proud to gather a multidisciplinary team of experts dedicated to information technologies associated to tax, with experience in the analysis of these requirements in countries that have already adopted these information normalization standards, as it is the case of Portugal.
Our team, with experts in this area, support on clients in Portugal, national and multinational companies, and have been participating in several projects assisting the Tax Authorities of countries that intend or have implemented these kind of solutions, within or outside European Union.
We have a deep experience in the definition of the technical and functional requirements of the electronic data processing in accounting, billing and logistics systems, in the support of the validation process with the AGT and in monitoring the fulfilling
of the requirements in the course of the daily companies activities.
We strongly believe that we are in conditions of assisting our clients on the fiscal and technological challenges, associated to the change process that will be a reality to the Angolan Tax Payers.
"By associating technology with tax, Angola will step further towards an effective control of operations performed within its territory aiming on the reduction and mitigation of the tax evasion."
Contact us
