Financial Services, Latvia, Markets and Companies, Technology

Companies that submit their annual statements too late will have individual meetings with the Revenue Service officers who will decide, taking into consideration information on a given company's operations in the EDS and the limited access to the system due to multiple users being logged on, whether the company is to be fined or not.

The Revenue Service has not said when the performance of the EDS could be improved, and recommends businessmen to submit their annual statements as well as income tax reports in writing.

The Revenue Service notes that it regularly updates the EDS to improve its throughput and speed, for instance, several new additional servers were installed earlier this month. The Revenue Service has also spoken to the developers of the EDS, which are now, together with IBM, looking for ways to increase the speed and accessibility of the EDS.

Newspaper "Dienas Bizness" writes today that the EDS is oftentimes down these days as companies try to upload their annual statements before deadline, which is the end of April. This concerns not only regular hours but also evenings and weekends. Therefore, submitting a company's annual statement has become a very time-consuming and nerve-racking affair.

Several accountants interviewed by "Dienas Bizness" earlier this week were angry at the Revenue Service, which had not warned accountants about the problem or told them what they should do now, given that it was the Revenue Service that had urged accountants to submit their annual statements electronically.

The Revenue Service apologizes to EDS users, and notes that the current problems are due to a large number of EDS users trying upload voluminous documents simultaneously, which slows the system down significantly.