The "Tax and Customs Electronic Services Portal (PUESC)" Project

The "Tax and Customs Electronic Services Portal (PUESC)" Project was co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund under the Operational Programme Digital Poland for 2014-2020, Priority Axis 2 “E-government and open government”, Measure 2.1 “High availability and quality of public e-services”. The project was implemented as a programme.

The aim of the project was expand on the scope of the cases in the area of customs and excise duty that the citizens and entrepreneurs can handle by electronic means.

The project involved the upgrading of the Tax and Customs Information System (SISC) – building new and upgrading the currently used SISC components and delivering the infrastructure and equipment to meet the needs of border crossing points and data warehouses.

The element of SISC that was to be modernised was the Tax and Customs Electronic Services Portal – the puesc.gov.pl service portal, which ensures a two-way and secure communication with the clients of the National Revenue Administration, offering the National Revenue Administration's electronic public services in such areas as:

  • import, export, and transit of goods,
  • trade in excise goods,
  • transport of goods covered by the monitoring system,
  • statistics of trade in goods among EU Member States.

The project included implementing new and improved public e-services of the National Revenue Administration related to:

  • customs clearance - taking into account new EU requirements and the need to unify, digitize, and improve customer service handled by different services involved in the process, while supporting the tasks related to ensuring the security of trade in goods and market protection;
  • crossing the border - based on maximum automation and digitisation, which will allow the process to be carried out quickly, efficiently, in accordance with clients’ expectations and modern technological standards, while ensuring a high level of security of the EU’s external border;
  • administrative customer service, e.g. in the area of enabling operations, settlement of special procedures, issuing decisions, as well as in matters related to excise duty - using transactional, personalised electronic communication channels.

The modernised e-services improve the customer service offered to National Revenue Administration's clients in these areas and broaden the range of issues that may be handled electronically. They provide the clients with:

  • efficient services at border crossing points, using the automatic data exchange mechanisms and automatic identification of vehicles and traffic control (Digital Border Service);
  • ability to send in a notice of intent to appear at the border and to transmit data on persons and goods in advance (Advice service); this will make it possible for the National Revenue Administration to prepare the customs clearance provisionally and to shorten the client’s waiting time at the border crossing points, while allowing also to reuse of the transmitted data further in the electronic processing;
  • data exchange and reusability schemes among the National Revenue Administration and NRA’s partners and clients, as well as coordination of joint inspections to improve the quality and to accelerate customer service (Foreign Trade One Stop service);
  • performing customs clearance in accordance with the new rules resulting from the provisions of the Union Customs Code (Digital Customs Clearance service in accordance with the Union Customs Code);
  • submitting an electronic settlement of the special procedure and enabling the National Revenue Administration to handle the settlement of these procedures, using the automatic and electronic data exchange mechanisms (Special Procedures Settlement service);
  • electronic issuing, amending and revoking decisions, authorisations and certificates, in accordance with the Union Customs Code (e-Decisions service);
  • electronic processing of acquiring and settling excise tax markings – excise bands (e-Excise bands service);
  • movement of excise goods using electronic documents (e-Movement service);
  • electronic confirmation of compliance with the excise duty obligation when registering a passenger car (e-Car registration support service);
  • electronic delivery of documents that will be used in the processes carried out as part of the e-services offered on the PUESC portal (e-Documents service); settling amounts  due through electronically by real-time online payments (e-Payments service).

The PUESC project was addressed to entrepreneurs and natural persons who trade in goods with foreign countries, including those who cross the external border of the European Union and operate in the duty area. These are:

  • all Polish and foreign entrepreneurs who clear through customs in Poland;
  • entrepreneurs and natural persons who cross the EU’s external border;
  • entrepreneurs that trade in excise goods other than goods covered by the excise duty suspension agreement;
  • taxpayers who acquire and import passenger cars intra-Community and entrepreneurs that trade in excise goods, which are obligatorily labelled with excise tax markings.

 

Digitization of services was to increase convenience and streamline business processes carried out by entrepreneurs and citizens alike – as clients of the National Revenue Administration. It made it possible to handle matters electronically, or – while limiting the need to contact NRA directly – remotely, irrespective of the place of stay or type of business and type of technology used.