The Act on Tax Procedures from 2003 has been replaced by new laws: general taxation principles, rules on tax returns and other tax administration as well as the rights and obligations of taxpayers are now regulated in a new act whereas the complete tax procedure will be regulated in a separate act.
As a consequence of the trends in the past years, the new laws allow for electronic procedure in all matters of tax administration.
The new set of laws simplifies the framework of audits: in the future, there will be only two types of tax audits. Compliance audits will focus on whether the taxpayer has completed specific administrative obligations and the tax authority will collect information and examine the reality over appearance of economic events. On the other hand, tax payment audits will focus on tax returns, payment of taxes related to a particular tax and period.
There will be a hard deadline of 365 days for the tax authority to close tax payment audits and such procedures may be suspended only to a limited extent.
Some of the reporting obligations are now relocated in specific substantive laws and the taxpayers will have to pay close attention to certain new obligations and deadlines. For example, companies shall declare all data of their foreign bank accounts to the tax authority by 31 January, 2018. Failing to do so may result in receiving a fine of up to 500,000 HUF.