{"id":87483,"date":"2026-05-11T11:47:51","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T09:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nssud.sk\/?p=87483"},"modified":"2026-06-26T14:05:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T12:05:23","slug":"when-using-tax-calculation-based-on-assisting-data-the-tax-authority-is-ex-offo-required-to-take-into-account-not-only-income-but-also-any-established-circumstances-that-result-in-benefits-for-the-t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nssud.sk\/en\/when-using-tax-calculation-based-on-assisting-data-the-tax-authority-is-ex-offo-required-to-take-into-account-not-only-income-but-also-any-established-circumstances-that-result-in-benefits-for-the-t\/","title":{"rendered":"When using tax calculation based on assisting data, the tax authority is ex offo required, to take into account not only income but also any established circumstances that result in benefits for the taxpayer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Legal principle stated by the Court:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite the fact that the determination of tax based on assisting data is necessitated by circumstances on the part of the taxpayer and the tax authority has limited options for correctly determining the tax, the tax authority is still required, pursuant to Section 2(a) of the Tax Procedure Code, to determine the tax in a manner that reflects reality as closely as possible.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

On January 30th<\/sup>, 2026, The Supreme Administrative Court of the Slovak Republic, in its judgment Case No. 2Sfk\/52\/2024, dismissed the cassation appeal filed by the Financial Directorate of the Slovak Republic (hereinafter referred to as the \u201cFinancial Directorate\u201d) against the judgment of the Administrative Court in Bratislava (hereinafter referred to as the \u201cAdministrative Court\u201d) in a case concerning the assessment of income tax based on assisting data. The court of cassation ruled that if the tax authority used a VAT return as an estimate when calculating the tax, it should have explained why it considered the VAT return relevant with respect to revenue but not with respect to expenses.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Trnava Tax Office (hereinafter referred to as the \u201ctax authority\u201d) issued a decision assessing the tax difference, pursuant to Section 68(5) of Act No. 563\/2009 Coll. on Tax Administration (Tax Procedure Code) and on Amendments to Certain Acts, as amended and in effect during the relevant period (hereinafter referred to as the \u201cTax Procedure Code\u201d), to the taxpayer, SAD Sere\u010f, a corporate income tax difference, whereby the tax assessment was performed using assisting data, as the taxpayer did not submit any documents for the tax calculation.<\/p>\n

The Regional Court in Trnava initially dismissed SAD Sere\u010f\u2019s administrative action as unfounded. Based on the company\u2019s cassation appeal and after the case was remanded to the administrative court for further proceedings, the administrative court overturned the decisions of both the Financial Directorate and the tax authority and remanded the case to the tax authority for further proceedings. The Administrative Court concluded that it was undisputed that the conditions for determining the tax using assisting data had been met. In determining the tax, the tax authority did not lawfully process the data provided in the VAT returns for the relevant period, as it took into account only the data in the revenue section and not, at the same time, those in the expense section. The Administrative Court stated that, pursuant to Section 48(5) of the Tax Code, the tax authority is required to take into account findings that result in benefits for the taxpayer, and if the tax authority did not accept the expense data, it was required to justify its approach. The court of cassation held that the grounds for assessing tax based on auxiliary data are defined in Section 48(1) of the Tax Procedure Code. This is a special type of tax assessment in cases where, for reasons attributable to the taxpayer, the tax was not assessed on the basis of a properly filed tax return\u2014for example, because the taxpayer failed to file a tax return. If the taxpayer fails to cooperate, the tax authority is authorized, pursuant to Section 48(3) of the Tax Code, to use the assisting data at its disposal or to obtain. Pursuant to Section 2(a) of the Tax Procedure Code, the tax authority is required to select a procedure related to the administrative assessment of tax and to determine the tax in a manner that most closely reflects reality, while taking into account circumstances that result in benefits for the taxpayer, even if the taxpayer did not claim them.<\/p>\n

The court of cassation agreed with the administrative court that, without proper justification, it is not clear why the tax authority, when determining the tax based on assisting data, relied on the data from VAT returns only when determining revenue and did not consider the data relating to expenses. It was the tax authority’s duty to explain why it used certain assisting data\u2014specifically, revenue data\u2014but not others\u2014specifically, data relating to costs. According to the cassation court\u2019s panel, the administrative court correctly assessed the matter when it found that the decisions of the public administration authorities were not reviewable due to their lack of clarity and insufficient reasoning. Assuming that the public administration authorities fail to explain why, when determining the tax based on the supporting data, they did not use the cost data but only the revenue data from the same tax returns, the legality of the administrative reasoning cannot be reviewed with regard to Section 48(5) of the Tax Procedure Code. The court of cassation ruled that the tax authority is obligated to properly justify why it did not take into account the costs\u2014but only the revenues\u2014from the VAT tax returns as circumstances in favor of the plaintiff.<\/p>\n

In decision\u2019s conclusion, the court of cassation agreed with the Financial Directorate’s argument that the tax authority could not use a subsequently filed income tax return as a assisting data for determining the tax, since it was delivered to the tax authority only after the protocol on tax determination using assisting data had been delivered to the tax subject, meaning after the tax determination using assisting data had ended in accordance with Section 48, Paragraph 5 of the Tax Procedure Code. However, this did not affect the legality of the administrative court’s judgment decision.<\/p>\n

Based on the foregoing, the court of cassation dismissed the Financial Directorate\u2019s cassation appeal because, upon review, it found that the appeal was without merit.<\/p>\n

This judgment was adopted unanimously by the Supreme Administrative Court; No further legal remedy is available against it.<\/p>\n

This decision was rendered by Panel No. 2 of the Supreme Administrative Court, composed of: President of the Panel JUDr. Juraj Va\u010dok, PhD. (Judge-rapporteur) and members of the Panel JUDr. Elena Berthotyov\u00e1, PhD. and JUDr. Mari\u00e1n Tren\u010dan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Legal principle stated by the Court: Despite the fact that the determination of tax based on assisting data is necessitated by circumstances on the part of the taxpayer and the tax authority has limited options for correctly determining the tax, the tax authority is still required, pursuant to Section 2(a) of the Tax Procedure Code, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":49383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-release","category-administrative-agenda"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nssud.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nssud.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nssud.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nssud.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nssud.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nssud.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87486,"href":"https:\/\/www.nssud.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87483\/revisions\/87486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nssud.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nssud.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nssud.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nssud.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}