Revenue Service Posts Georgia Business Registry Online
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, needed for a variety of common transactions, including registering property or opening business bank accounts, required two trips to the tax inspectorate, where the business was registered: once to ask; and then, several days later, to receive. Preparing the abstract was a nightmare for tax officials, who had to dig through tens of thousands of aged and haphazardly organized files to find the necessary information.
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| Preparing abstracts from the old paper-based business registry archives created inefficiencies for entrepreneurs and Revenue Service officials |
Shonia’s group won a USAID procurement to digitize the registration archives, which the Revenue Service of the Ministry of Finance of Georgia inherited when it took over responsibility for business registration from the courts. 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,” Shonia says. “Now any business person will be able to obtain a business registry abstract immediately for any company at any tax inspectorate of Georgia.”
That step eliminated 63,000 visits a month: now, to ask is to receive. The Government of Georgia is working to eliminate the remaining 63,000 visits. The Revenue Service put the new electronic business registry online for direct public access by those such as journalists who just need the information the abstract contains, not the official document. And property registrars at the National Agency of Public Registry plan to use the new online feature in registering business property transactions, eliminating the requirement that their customers submit business registry abstracts.
The new electronic signature law now pending in Georgia’s Parliament will fully eliminate the need for visits. Paper documents will no longer be required, and the Revenue Service can issue abstracts electronically.
Ever the entrepreneur, Shonia is making new plans.
“This project also encouraged us to think about creating an Information Center for all taxpayers in Georgia and extending our modest role in creating a better business environment in the country,” she says.
Digitizing the business registry and putting it online is only one of a number of Revenue Service information technology projects to improve customer service supported by USAID’s Business Climate Reform Project. All Georgian taxpayers can now access their account information online and download all necessary tax declarations from the Revenue Service web portal. A current project will introduce electronic filing of tax declarations, first for VAT, and then for other taxes.
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