Areas of Strength

  • Slovenia displays a low VAT compliance gap, supported by a well-established VAT collection and administration system. In 2023, Slovenia’s VAT compliance gap was estimated at 5% of the VAT Total Tax Liability, well below the EU average (9.5%). Notably, Slovenia performs well in the area of VAT registration, deregistration and identification, with VAT registration and return filing being fully digitalised, and the registration process including several risk checks.
  • Slovenia shows strong performance in e-filing across all tax types, with near-universal digital filing rates. In particular, Slovenia has had full uptake of VAT e-filling since 2018, and above EU average e-filling rates for corporate income taxation (CIT) and personal income taxation (PIT). These high e-filing rates reflect an effective digital interface, likely due to userfriendly systems and mandatory digital submission. Slovenia is among the better-performing Member States in terms of compliance burden reduction.

 

Areas for Improvement

  • Slovenia does not perform corporate income tax (CIT) and personal income tax (PIT) gap estimation, although it has recently taken steps to strengthen its tax gap estimation capabilities. Slovenia is not among the EU Member States that officially estimate or publish national tax gaps, besides the participation in the EU VAT gap exercise. Measuring tax gaps would provide valuable insights into compliance levels, enforcement effectiveness, and priority areas for tax policy reform. In light of the relatively high estimates of the shadow economy, a comprehensive effort to estimate tax compliance gaps, including in personal and corporate taxation, would also allow to better understand the drivers and revenue effects of the shadow economy. Recently, Slovenia has cooperated with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to improve the CIT administration including CIT gap estimation, with the support of the EU Technical Support Instrument (TSI).
  • Slovenia has no framework in place to regularly review and evaluate tax expenditures. While Slovenia regularly publishes tax expenditure reports, systematic tax policy review and evaluation could provide opportunities to broaden the tax base by reducing tax expenditures, and simultaneously ensure an increase in public revenue, efficiency, transparency and fairness of the tax system. Relatedly, Slovenia also received a 2025 Country-Specific Recommendation to improve the quality of public finances by implementing spending reviews.
  • The effectiveness of the Slovenian tax recovery system remains weak overall. Slovenia has an operational legal and administrative framework for tax recovery, but it lacks a number of provisions that would improve its functioning (e.g. risk-based approach to debt recovery, automated triggers in the recovery process, data tracking on contested tax claims).

 

Tax Complexity

Slovenia ranks 26th out of the 27 Member States in the Tax Complexity Index (TCI), where a higher rank corresponds to lower tax complexity. The TCI is based on the Global MNC Tax Complexity Project, a joint research project of Deborah Schanz (LMU Munich) and Caren Sureth-Sloane (Paderborn University). The TCI 2024 places Slovenia 20th among the Member States with regards to Tax Framework Complexity, and 27th with regards to Tax Code Complexity. This suggests that multinationals face a rather complex CIT system in Slovenia, both in terms of the tax processes carried out by the tax authorities (notably in the area of appeals, according to the authors), and of the structure of the tax regulations (particularly in the area of transfer pricing, according to the authors).

 

The full Commission Staff Working Document of the Mind the Gap Report - Challenges and opportunities for tax compliance and tax expenditure in the EU regarding Slovenia can be found here.

 

 

Copyright – internationaltaxplaza.info

 

 

Follow International Tax Plaza on Twitter (@IntTaxPlaza)

 

 

Submit to FacebookSubmit to TwitterSubmit to LinkedIn
INTERESTING ARTICLES