(Ecofin Agency) - Côte d’Ivoire has developed a digital platform to let companies and institutions freely submit their financial reports to the tax administration.

Called E-liasse, the platform was developed in the framework of the dematerialization of financial reports’ management prescribed in one of WAEMU’s directives dating back to 2009. This directive instituted a single window approach for financial reports' submission to guarantee unity, homogeneity, and comparability of the reports submitted by companies and institutions within the union. The aim of this reform was to guarantee the reports’ traceability, reliability, securitization and archiving.

This platform has a feature which can help improve the quality of financial information by offering chartered accountants the possibility to deliver a visa for the financial statements or certificate of execution.

Let’s note that this possibility to issue the visa for the financial statement (a certificate secured by a sticker), before those statements are submitted to the tax administration was conferred to the accountants by the above-mentioned directive. This visa guarantees the trustworthiness of a company or institution’s accounts.

To launch the platform, last weekend, Côte d’Ivoire’s association of chartered accountants, in collaboration with the tax directorate organized a workshop gathering companies, cooperatives, traders and craftsmen to explain the advantages of the visa for the financial statement and the E-liasse platform.

It is also worth reminding that in April 2018, the country also launched E-impôt to allow online tax filling and payment.