IPT Compliance in Slovakia: A Primer on Error Corrections

A new year has arrived, marking an excellent opportunity to continue our blog series addressing Insurance Premium Tax (IPT) compliance in different countries.

You can read other blogs in this series by visiting our Denmark, Finland, and the UK entries or by downloading Sovos’ Guide on IPT Compliance. Written by our team of IPT and regulatory specialists, this guide is packed full of insight to navigate the ever-changing regulatory landscape.

How does IPT operate in Slovakia?

To start, IPT in Slovakia became effective on 1 January 2019, with the default IPT tax rate of 8%.

There are three tax points for IPT in Slovakia:

1. Booked date – when the premium receivable is booked into the system
2. Cash received date – when the premium payment is received
3. Payment due date – when the premium is due to be paid

Insurers are not required to separately notify or request permission to use one tax point over another but an insurer must notify on the quarterly tax return which tax point they’re using. It’s important to note the choice of tax point must be used for eight consecutive calendar quarters.

Interestingly, Slovakia’s approach to tax points provides flexibility for insurers when choosing to pay tax, giving the option to pay upfront or spread out IPT payments in instalments across multiple returns.

Slovakian IPT is due on a calendar quarterly basis (e.g. January to March return declared in April). This is the same for the payment due at the end of the month. It’s worth noting that all returns are filed electronically so there are no paper returns.

An issuance of a premium is treated according to the relevant class of business and is placed in the corresponding section on the return. A renewal would be treated in the same manner.

For treatment of mid-term adjustments, in the case whereby a premium or part thereof, is increased, reduced or cancelled, there is a separate box on the return used for submission (Box 19). This is unusual in comparison to other countries, predominantly because an increase in premium results in a different treatment.

What happens about the treatment of error corrections?

A correction error can be categorised in two ways.

Mistakes can happen and typos can occur in the supply chain. Maybe there was a multi global risk covering multiple countries and apportionment was incorrectly allocated in the first instance.

In the case of a correction of an error a supplementary declaration must be submitted for the appropriate period affected.

For example, if in the first quarter EUR 1,000 was declared for a particular risk based on apportionment produced. Later down the line in Q3, on further review it should have been EUR 1,200. In this case, the additional EUR 200 cannot be submitted on the Q3 declaration. An amended return would need to be considered for Q1 and submitted separately – this is true for both increases and decreases.

Overall, negatives are allowed and the Slovakian tax authority should refund the money back to the insurer. Therefore, the credit cannot be carried over to the next reporting period. There are no limits regarding how much the insurer can regularise but a degree of caution is advised.

Whilst there’s no official guidance, it would be wise to keep any documentation as evidence if a large amount needs to be reclaimed.

Historicals need to be submitted as a supplementary return (i.e. outside the current return). The Slovakian tax authority can impose penalties between EUR 30.00 and EUR 32,000.00.