Even though the deadline for submitting financial statements for businesses, which is September 30th, is approaching, around 5,000 businesses have still not submitted their balance sheets to the National Business Center.
The National Business Center (NBC) informs Monitor that as of Thursday afternoon, 19,291 approved financial statements had been submitted to the NBC, while approximately 80 applications are in the queue for review. According to the National Business Center, the expected number of applications is 24,218.
As of July 31, approximately 17,139 financial statements were approved. The National Business Center (QKB) decided to postpone the deadline for submitting financial statements to September 30, following the congestion created by July 31, where many businesses could not submit their financial statements due to overload. The QKB also announced that there will be no penalties for entities that have been issued an application number.
“Regarding the legal obligation for the submission of financial statements for 2018, we inform you that entities that applied online through the e-albania portal by 31.07.2018 (24:00) and whose application received an application number (CN...), but due to the high overload of applications at the same time it was impossible to complete and submit the financial statements properly, no administrative penalty will be applied based on Article 74, point 3 of Law no. 9723, dated 03.05.2007, “On Business Registration”, announced QKB on July 31.".
This was the first year that, based on the accounting law, the number of statements to be declared has increased. In addition to the online submission of financial statements, which took an average of a few minutes, a series of other documents have now been added and filled out, such as the economic activity progress report, information on assets, income, average number of employees, business code, etc.
From the outset, businesses complained that the system was slow and that documents took time to upload online. As a result, on the last day, the National Business Center announced that due to the overload, no fines would be applied to those who received an application number, provided they submit by September 30th.
Businesses continue to complain that the system still has problems. “I've been trying to submit the latest balance sheet for two days and I can't, the system isn't working,” says Suela, an economist at an accounting firm in the capital.
However, September 30 remains the deadline and businesses cannot hope for another extension.
Source: Magazine “Monitor“