| Online registry reduces bureaucratic burden for businesses
Thea Shonia, a start-up businesswoman, is helping to save Georgians an estimated 126,000 trips a month to their local tax inspectorates to obtain business registry abstracts.
Each request for an abstract, which are needed for a variety of common business operations such as opening a bank account, required two trips to the tax inspectorate — first to ask for it, and then, several days later, to pick it up. Preparing the abstract was an arduous task for tax officials, who had to dig through tens of thousands of aged and haphazardly organized files to find the necessary information.
Thea’s group won a contract through the USAID-funded Business Climate Reform project to digitize the registration archives. She established a new company, Caucasus 2006, hired 15 operators, and set up a strong network of implementing partners across Georgia.
Now, the job is done. “We have entered 52,138 records into a single database,” Thea said. “Now any businessman will be able to obtain a business registry abstract immediately for any company at any tax inspectorate of Georgia.”
Eliminating that extra step has reduced the number of visits to tax inspectorates by 63,000 each month — and the Government of Georgia is working to eliminate the rest. The Revenue Service put the electronic business registry online for direct public access by those, such as journalists, who need only the information the abstract contains and not the official document. And property registrars at the National Agency of Public Registry plan to use the new online feature to register business property transactions, eliminating the requirement that their customers submit business registry abstracts.
Finally, the new electronic signature law now pending in Parliament will eliminate the need for any visits. Paper documents will no longer be required, and the Revenue Service will be able to issue abstracts electronically.
Digitizing the business registry and putting it online is only one of a number of Revenue Service information technology projects to improve customer service. All Georgian taxpayers now can access their account information online and download all necessary tax declarations from the Revenue Service web portal. Another initiative will introduce electronic filing of tax declarations, first for VAT, and then for other taxes.
Ever the entrepreneur, Thea is making new plans. “This project gave us our first experience subcontracting for the government and an international donor. Now that we have experience and a successful result behind us, we are developing a proposal for a new project and are looking for the next projects we will bid on.”
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