The introduction of mandatory data boxes “purifies” the business environment in the Czech Republic. More people canceled their businesses because of this than in previous years. However, there are still three-quarters of a million Czechs who have not yet opened their data card as a matter of obligation – either because they consider it unnecessary or because they do not have sufficient technical knowledge. These people are at risk of problems with the authorities.
According to the law, all entrepreneurs who have an ID number must have mailboxes this year. But many people don’t want them. Mostly because they are no longer in business, or they have two mailboxes at the same time. In the past, they voluntarily set up a date card themselves as natural persons, i.e. on a birth number. And now they also have the “business” one.
In the first quarter of this year alone, 196,379 self-employed people closed their businesses, 182,000 more than last year, data from the portal www.informaceofirmach.cz, collected by CRIF – Czech Credit Bureau, showed. In April, more people quit their businesses than last year in the first four months of the year.
In contrast, 22,120 self-employed people started their business, i.e. 2,443 more than in the same period last year.
“The mandatory introduction of data boxes for self-employed people did not deter many people from starting a business. In the first three months, the largest number of people started their own business since the first quarter of 2011. The obligation to set up a data box thus led to the cleaning of self-employed businesses mainly from long-term inactive entrepreneurs. The data box was a complication for them, which they did not want to undergo due to the unused trade, so they preferred to cancel the trade license,” confirms CRIF analyst Věra Kameníčková. He adds that with April, the decrease in entrepreneurs associated with the mandatory introduction of data boxes began to slowly subside.
Beware of being ignored
In contrast, many people decided to simply ignore the assigned data box instead of disrupting the business. The state established more than two million of them. According to the Digital and Information Agency, however, a significant number of entrepreneurial individuals and non-entrepreneurial legal entities have not yet registered. “We are currently below the threshold of 760,000 unregistered users,” agency spokesperson Karolína Sieglová explains to Aktuálně.cz.
However, this number has been decreasing only slowly in recent weeks. However, experts and authorities repeatedly warn against ignoring the data.
The Ministry repeatedly appeals to self-employed people who refuse to log in to mailboxes for reasons of protest after receiving the access data for the new data card from the office. “If the holder of the data box does not log into it, it will automatically become available even with fiction on the tenth day from the failure to receive the envelope with the access data or on the fifteenth day from the date of delivery of the access data,” Hana Malá from the press department of the Ministry of the Interior told Aktuálně.cz in March.
Even in the case of inactivity or inactivity of the holder of the data box, documents and fiction will continue to be delivered to it, and the holder of the data box is threatened with legal effects from the documents received in this way.
“It should be noted that some public reporting bodies, such as tax authorities, may be forced to submit via data box if the box is made available, and failure to do so may also carry sanctions,” the spokeswoman pointed out.
The business is mainly disrupted by the elderly
According to experts, one of the main reasons why many entrepreneurs are not willing to use a data box may be insufficient technical knowledge to handle electronic communication, this may concern especially older users.
After all, this is also indicated by the current data of the CRIF company. According to them, from the beginning of the year to the end of April, people aged 61 and over had the highest share, namely 61 percent, of defunct entrepreneurs. Year-on-year, the number of deaths of self-employed persons aged 51 to 60 increased the most, by more than 16 times. “From this it can be deduced that older people have a harder time getting along with data boxes than the younger generation,” says the company’s report.
The reluctance of people to use the mandatory data box from the state can also be strengthened by the fact that they do not see advantages in them or do not want to be forced into them. “Instead of presenting positive benefits, it is more likely to talk about its obligations. Who among us wants to have something mandatory and have to do something? After all, it is not a benefit that the state creates a narrow place for me somewhere, where queues form, and then argues to me that with a data card there I don’t have to stand,” points out Michal Kocanda, director of the software company Atlas Software.
Kocanda adds that the benefits of the date card are numerous – from the price of the letter, ease of collection, certainty of delivery to the time saved mentioned by the state.
The state needs to explain better, say experts
Jan Blažek, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Banking Identity, stated at the Digital Czech Republic 2023 conference in May that the government should simply explain to people what eDocuments or Data boxes are useful for.
“A citizen behaves rationally. If I give a citizen a free tool that is simple, easy to use and will help them, then I don’t need to force them to do anything. People will love it. To do this, it is necessary to explain it to people simply,” she added, according to the agency ČTK founder of Zásilkovna Simona Kijonková.
However, according to Deputy Prime Minister for Digitization Ivan Bartoš (Pirates), citizens’ experience with the state’s electronic services is poor. The reason was a wrong assignment to the suppliers. “The user-friendliness and the way the application looks must change,” Bartoš pointed out. He added that it is against this to make it mandatory for people to use electronic services, including data boxes.
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2023-06-06 18:41:57
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