[openstandaarden] TVA/VAT: Company and Tax on Line

[Ward Vandewege]

David GLAUDE wrote:
> I am looking for detailed description of company that had problem 
> filling the VAT form (or Tax on Line for citizen) because of the used of 
> non free software or incompatible or non standard API/protocol/format.

I filed my personal taxes online with the Tax on Line application at 
http://www.belgium.be. I used Linux + MozillaFirebird, and the 
application worked _flawlessly_. Not ONE single small layout problem, 
let alone more serious site operation problems. In addition to that, the 
application is well designed. It does not depart very much from the 
paper tax form, allowing someone familiar with the paper version to find 
  her way without much trouble. At the same time, it adds new features 
like calculating the result of ones taxes. And it allows saving of the 
(partially) completed form at any moment. It even provides a PDF copy of 
the completed form after filing!

In other words, I am _very_ impressed with the current setup. Our tax 
money has been well spent on that application. Other parts of the 
government (ministry of education, VRT, ...) can learn a lot from the 
tax-on-web application.

As a side note, I think a _positive_ comment by openstandaarden.be, 
encouraging the government to continue on the chosen path of 
inter-operability and open standards compliance, would be a nice thing 
to do. Too often we need to complain - encouraging could be far more 
effective.

> This is for "political" use, the goal might be to make oral question in 
> front of Parliament or more.

If that happens, I think there should be a big compliment included for 
the team that built this application.

What may deserve a question in front of parliament is why it takes 
almost a YEAR for the tax service to process the information. I have an 
American friend who after filing her taxes online this year received her 
tax refund _in her bank account_ two WEEKS later.

Bye for now,
Ward.