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AN OVERVIEW OF GENERAL SOCIO-ECONOMIC SITUATION IN SERBIA
Agency. Registration is voluntary, but it is a condition for obtaining a status of legal entity.
Since the deadline for registration is 22 April 2011, the existing data on the number of
registered associations at the Serbian Business Registers Agency is not relevant 188 . Until
the expiry of this date, we may talk about the number of NGOs in Serbia only based on the
data of the Statistical Office of Serbia, according to which there were 27680 registered
NGOs as of 31 December 2009 189 . According to the NGO Directory, run by the Center for
Development of Non-Profit Sector (CRNPS), there were 2247 active nongovernmental
organizations in Serbia as of 31 January 2011 190 .
§ 124. Tax regulations of relevance for work of NGOs in Serbia are inconsistent and in
some segments restrictive. Tax legislation is rather uneven in terms of tax relieves for
NGOs, too. With regard to tax and contribution rates on paid fees, NGOs are treated
like enterprises, i.e. for-profit legal entities and are in no way tax empted or relieved. The
long-waited Law on Volunteering 191 came into force six months after its passage in the
mid-2010. However, NGOs estimate this Law as over-regulated, stressing that some of
its provisions make the hiring of volunteers and the work of civil society in Serbia much
more difficult. 192 .
§ 125. A particular problem refers to different and contradictory interpretation of laws
that govern financial operations. Namely, since the autumn of 2006, local tax authorities
in certain Serbian municipalities, in particular Stari Grad municipality in Belgrade and
some municipalities in Serbia, have started the examination of financial operations of
NGOs, especially areas regulated by the Property Tax Law, Article 14, Paragraph 2 193 .
Namely, competent tax authorities interpreted this Article as an obligation of NGOs to
pay additional property tax on all donations, that are in this case observed as gifts 194 .
It need not be said that this new interpretation of an old regulation have put those
NGOs to which the tax authority issued an Order to pay the gift tax, retrospectively
for 2005 and 2006, in a very unfavorable position. Thus, in November 2006, Belgradebased
NGO AWIN (Association for Women’s Initiative) was faced with request by the
Stari Grad municipality financial inspection to pay tax on all donations received 2005 and
2006, retrospectively, within the period of 15 days. This request was reportedly made
based on the Law on Property Tax, i.e. gift tax. Although donations which NGOs receive
are not gifts, but grants made on the basis of a bilateral agreement stipulating what
activities should be carried out with the donation received, AWIN was forced to pay this
188
Only 4800 organizations were registered in the first year, roundtable “Law on Associations – One Yea Later”.
189
Republički zavod za statistiku, Saopštenje broj 209 – god LX, 15. 07.2010, Pravna - lica u Srbiji stanje 30.06.2010.
190
Center for Development of Non-Profit Sector (CRNPS), upon voluntary registration of NGOs http://www.crnps.org.rs/
191
Official Gazette of RS, no. 36/10.
192
Presentation of the new Law on Volunteering in Novi Sad on 27 September 2010 organized by Civil Initiatives in cooperation with Provincial
Secretariat for Labor, Employment and Gender Equality of AP Vojvodina, Vojvodina Fund for Development of NON Profit Sector, Novi Sad
Humanitarian Center and European Center for Non Profit Law (Budapest).
193
Official Gazette of RS, no. 26/2001, Official Journal of FRY no. 42/2002 and Official Gazette of RS, no. 80/2002, 135/2004 and 61/2007.
194
In Article 21, Paragraph 1, Item 5 thereof, it is said that gift tax and inheritance tax shall not be payable by “a fund or a foundation on inherited
property or property received as gift that is used for purposes for which the fund or the foundation has been established”.
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