Tax Money Order

By Lubor Kunc (lubor.kunc@seznam.cz)

Published in the Czechoslovak Specialist (www.csphilately.org)

Parliamentary elections were scheduled for June 2006. Social-democratic government thought how to attract public attention and get public support. Ministry of Finance managed by Mr. Sobotka of the party got an idea to enable the taxpayers to pay their duties free of any charge. Until this reform was done, the taxpayers can pay taxes in cash at financial offices, by bank transfers or by postal money orders (but always for a fee).

On March 15, 2006 the new “Tax Money Order” was introduced (fig. 1). This is a special kind of money order being suitable only for payment of taxes (e.g. VAT, income tax, motor tax, real estate tax) or customs duties. Every tax has a special ID code, e.g. VAT to be marked as 705 on the money order. To identify the tax office you are paying to, you write in upper right corner its registration number. The left part of the money order serves as confirmation of tax payment and it is returned at the post office to the sender.

Fig. 1

The system is very effective and convenient for taxpayers, because they can send the taxes for free from every of 3.405 post offices working in the Czech Republic at the moment. This service started first after signature of a contract between Ministry of Finance and Czech Postal Administration. The postal administration receives about CZK 50.000.000,- p.a. (about USD 2,5 mil.) from Ministry of Finance for this service, every “free” Tax Money Order is billed with CZK 20,- (USD 0,95). This is not only nice income, but also good promotion of the postal administration, because majority of people use to pay bills via banks and quantity of money orders sent via post offices was decreased.

Thanks to our life in Internet age, the tax money order can be downloaded at the web site of Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic; see

http://cds.mfcr.cz/cps/rde/xbcr/SID-53EDF4E6-38F21EEF/cds/3Danova_slozenka_K.pdf

Do you want to know, if the trick helped to the Social Democrats? Here is the answer: Partially. However it was not the main argument, the party received in the elections more votes then expected, but their government was replaced by government(s) of election winner. On other side, Social Democrats are still able to play important role in political scene of the Czech Republic and they influence the politics more than the winning ODS party (Conservatives).

Despite to the political success, the future of the Tax Money Order is not clear. The program was agreed with Czech Postal Administration without a public tender (in order to start it before the elections), so it was limited for 1 year only. Ministry of Finance is currently unsatisfied with fee payable to the Czech Postal Administration and it decided to prepare a tender for providing the service in next period. Among expected participants of the tender we find not only the postal administration, but also commercial banks and ticket sellers, who can use their machinery equipment for tax payments. It is therefore possible, that Tax Money Orders move from postal operations to banking ones and this special type of postal stationery will exist only one year.

P.S.: This article was written in 2006. However the government changed in the Czech Republic since that year, the tax money orders still do exist and the Czech Postal Administration still runs the business. The taxes are always needed … !

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