Serbia is moving to make electronic payment of administrative fees and charges mandatory across national and local government, with public authorities required to complete implementation by the end of 2026. Amendments to the Law on Electronic Administration require public bodies to enable electronic payments through the eGovernment portal, while authorities that have not yet registered as users must join the system. Public institutions must also obtain access to electronic records confirming whether required fees and charges have been paid. The change is expected to reduce the need for companies and citizens to submit payment slips as proof of settled administrative obligations.
Thousands of non-tax charges covered
The reform addresses a fragmented system of non-tax obligations affecting businesses across different levels of government. Business association NALED estimates that more than 2,000 non-tax charges are prescribed through over 500 national regulations, with approximately 400 additional local regulations.
For companies operating across several municipalities, compliance can involve different payment instructions, legal bases, procedures and administrative requirements. These processes can create additional costs, particularly for smaller companies without dedicated legal or financial teams. The reform is designed to move more of this process onto common digital infrastructure. The ePlati system provides the technical basis for electronic payment of administrative fees and charges. The new legal requirements are intended to ensure that individual authorities integrate their procedures rather than adopting the system unevenly.
Digital records replace manual payment evidence
A centralised payment system can allow companies to identify an obligation, generate the appropriate payment instruction, complete the transaction electronically and enable the receiving authority to verify payment directly. Under the traditional system, applicants may have to determine the correct account, payment code and reference number, make a separate payment and submit proof before an administrative procedure can proceed.
Removing these steps could affect businesses that regularly deal with permits, licences, registrations, approvals and municipal services. The reform also creates an electronic basis for examining the charges themselves, including which authorities impose them and whether individual obligations correspond to the public services provided. Parafiscal charges can operate economically in a similar way to taxes while being classified as fees or charges. Digitising payments can make those obligations easier to catalogue and connect with specific administrative procedures and legal bases.
Wider register reforms planned
NALED has advocated combining electronic collection with a comprehensive and transparent register of non-tax obligations, allowing unnecessary parafiscal charges to be identified rather than simply collected more efficiently. The legislation also provides for further digital-government milestones, including a catalogue of administrative procedures and wider electronic access to government-register data.
These measures extend the reform from individual digital services toward greater connectivity between the government databases supporting administrative procedures. For companies, that could reduce the need to obtain information from one public authority and submit the same information to another. Data already held electronically by the state could instead be retrieved directly by another institution.
Implementation varies across government
Serbia has developed central e-government infrastructure, but administrative capacity differs among ministries, public agencies and municipalities. The implementation deadline will therefore test whether smaller local authorities can integrate their procedures alongside larger central institutions. Incomplete participation could leave businesses facing different systems depending on where they operate, with electronic procedures in one municipality and manual payments or documentation requirements in another. Standardisation is consequently as important to the reform as the underlying technology.
The issue also has implications for the broader cost of regulation. NALED estimates that the administrative burden for a representative Serbian microenterprise is around 2.6% of annual revenue. Not all of that burden is linked to fees, but the figure illustrates how repeated procedural requirements can become significant across tax filings, permits, registrations and other obligations.
Parafiscal charges have significant economic value
The 10 largest parafiscal charges paid by businesses amounted to around 1.1% of GDP, showing that non-tax obligations represent a significant source of public-sector revenue rather than only minor administrative payments. Electronic payment itself does not remove a company’s legal obligation to pay a charge.
Its potential benefit is to make the obligation more transparent, standardised and easier to administer. Once electronic records provide a clearer picture of which authority imposes each charge and under which procedure, policymakers will have better information for assessing which obligations should remain.
Business costs extend beyond taxation
For investors, the structure of administrative charges forms part of the wider cost of operating in a market. Companies assess not only corporate-tax rates but also permitting times, municipal charges, environmental fees, construction-related obligations and compliance requirements.
A system containing thousands of separate non-tax obligations can increase administrative complexity even when individual charges are relatively small. The effectiveness of Serbia’s digital-payment reform will therefore depend on whether the new infrastructure ultimately supports broader simplification of the system. The implementation deadline is the first major test for national and local authorities. Further progress will depend on whether electronic records and registers are subsequently used to identify duplicate, disproportionate or poorly justified parafiscal obligations, alongside the planned development of administrative-procedure and government-register systems.
