Brexit poses extra tasks for tax and customs authorities, says Hungarian finance ministry

Brexit will pose significant extra tasks for tax and customs office NAV and preparations for these are already underway, the finance ministry’s deputy state secretary for tax and international affairs said on Friday.

Initial estimates show that the office will have to handle nearly half a million extra customs clearances annually as a result of Brexit regardless of whether or not a planned free trade agreement between the European Union and Britain is signed, Tamás Molnár told the press on the sidelines of the autumn conference of the Hungarian Association of Customs Affairs.

Tax and customs revenues will be record high this year,

he said. The projected excise tax revenue for 2018 is 1,099.4 billion forints, as against 1,069 billion forints last year.

Customs clearance of goods from third countries and East Asia has been given special emphasis because Hungary wants to become central Europe’s customs clearance hub for the Middle East and the Far East, he said.

VAT CUT BAD FOR REVENUES?

As we wrote yesterday, reducing Hungary’s main VAT rate by two percentage points to 25 per cent would result in “many hundreds of billions of forints” of lost budget revenue, the deputy finance minister said. Read more HERE.

Source: MTI