“Bring Proof of Payment” Becomes a Thing of the Past – New Obligation for All Public Authorities

Going to a government counter with a paper payment slip and proof of a paid fee should soon become a thing of the past. Amendments to the Law on Electronic Administration, which enter into force today, require all public administration bodies to enable electronic payment of all fees and charges they collect in their procedures by the end of the year at the latest.

This means that citizens and businesses will no longer have to prove that they have made a payment – the authorities will verify payments ex officio. In this regard, national, provincial, and local authorities have until September 16 to register on the eGovernment Portal and the ePlati (ePay) system and enable their officials to access payment records.

This represents an important first step in the parafiscal reform and the optimization of non-tax revenue collection, a reform that NALED has been advocating for for more than 15 years and which the Ministry of Finance launched last year.

“For the new system to function effectively from start to finish, public authorities should, as soon as possible and no later than the end of October, enter and catalogue all of their fees and charges in the registry. They should then link those fees to the corresponding procedures in the Register of Administrative Procedures. This step is crucial to enable the Office for IT and eGovernment, through the ePlati system, to provide citizens and businesses with a simple way to select a procedure online. The system will then automatically calculate the applicable fee and allow it to be paid electronically,” said Jelena Bojović, Program Director at NALED.

To date, more than 5,200 individual fees and charges at both the national and local levels have been entered into the Unified Registry of Non-Tax Revenues, managed by the Republic Secretariat for Public Policies. A total of 93 out of 145 local self-government units and 44 national authorities have completed or begun registering their charges under 383 regulations.

Additional training and support will be available throughout September for authorities that have not yet completed the registration process, in order to accelerate data entry into the Unified Registry. The goal is to connect the complete and up-to-date registry with approximately 8,000 procedures listed in the Register of Administrative Procedures, while more than 9,000 public bodies will gain access to payment records.

Citizens and businesses can already pay fees and charges for services provided by the Ministry of the Interior through the ePlati system, and the “General Payment Slip” option is also available. However, once the second phase of the reform is completed, electronic payment should be enabled for all procedures across all public authorities. After selecting a specific procedure, the system will automatically display which fees and charges need to be paid, to whom they should be paid, and in what amount. Payment details will be pre-filled.

“This change will be felt most directly in the everyday interactions between citizens, businesses, and the state. Less paperwork, fewer trips to government counters, and less room for error – while providing greater certainty that payments have been properly recorded. For businesses, it is particularly important that costs and obligations become more transparent and predictable, an issue that has been highlighted for more than a decade,” Bojović emphasized, concluding that the objective of the parafiscal reform is transparency and predictability as the first step, administrative burden reduction as the second, and the elimination of duplicate or excessively high charges as the final outcome.

Digitalization is also expected to reduce the risk of errors and abuses associated with paper payment slips, including the repeated use of the same payment slip or the alteration of information on an already certified proof of payment.

The reform of the non-tax revenue system, implemented by the Ministry of Finance, the Office for IT and eGovernment, the Republic Secretariat for Public Policies, and the Treasury Administration, with the support of NALED, is one of the measures included in the Reform Agenda of the Republic of Serbia under the EU Growth Plan for the Western Balkans. The objective of the reform is to establish a unified system for managing non-tax revenues at both the national and local levels, ensuring greater transparency and predictability through the electronic calculation and payment of fees and charges, without the need to fill out payment slips or submit proof of payment.