IT MADE THE NEWS the other day: the Belgian government is only an average performer where it comes to digitisation. And we may even consider ourselves fortunate in having Tax-on-web to boost our reputation. This application falls under what can be called the front office of Finance. The back office of Finance, however, is anything but state of the art.

ANYONE WHO HAS TO MANAGE something will have had the same experience: order and structure are indispensable prerequisites for controlling things and building a better enterprise. This applied for my mother when she was running het household, and it also applies for hospitals and factories. Moreover, there is a paradox: the larger an organisation gets, the more order and structure are required. But at the same time, maintaining that order and structure becomes increasingly difficult. Finance performs poorly in this area. The quality of its internal processes has decreased over the past decades. Which is a bad thing for the taxpayer as well as the tax administration.

IT IS, FOR EXAMPLE, NOT UNCOMMON that two different departments of Finance, independently of each other and without the other party knowing, are investigating the same case and sometimes have a different or even an opposing vision on that case. Or that the tax authorities are unable to upload court decisions, resulting in their collecting incorrect amounts. Or that Finance allows tax inspectors to use their private mobile phones for taking photos of point-of-sale systems and other delicate information at taxpayers. There are obviously no protocols for dealing with that company-sensitive information and how to protect it.

THE EMAILS SENT BY FINANCE do not have any prescribed form. In this way, the tax authorities increasingly organise the tax audit in an informal way, without the formal requirements prescribed by the law. This may very well lead to challenges. Finance also fails to classify all correspondence on taxpayers in their files, which also has consequences. The taxpayer never sees his complete file, though this is his essential right. This is a problem for the tax authorities as well, as other services will not get proper insight into all audit tasks carried out by the tax office. A civil servant who has to assess an objection to a taxation does not have an easy task. All these problems impede the course of justice, affect the reputation of the tax authorities, and provide the taxpayer with loads of ammunition for discussions.

THE SATISFACTION WITH Tax-on-web should not divert attention from the real problem: the digital back office. Or, as a senior civil servant frankly admitted to me: “As far as that is concerned, Finance is an enterprise in trouble.”