Activity

The Business Ombudsman shall provide the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of a person related to his/her entrepreneurial activities through the following:

• Respond to individual and joint applications;
• Reveal errors in the Georgian legislation and practice;
• Conduct informational-consultative activities.

Within his/her competences, the Business Ombudsman shall be entitled to:

• Request and receive information/document from administrative agency, except the cases stipulated in the law;
• Sign agreement with administrative body on exchange of information/documents and cooperation;
• Address the specialist, scientific and/or educational institution for explanation/conclusion needed for the work purposes;
• Create working group, which may include representatives of administrative body and private sector;
• In certain cases, fulfil the function of court consultant (Amicus Curiae) in the Constitutional Court of Georgia.

The Business Ombudsman shall be independent in implementation of responsibilities. Any influence on the Business Ombudsman or interference in his/her activities shall be prohibited.

In his/her activities, the Business Ombudsman shall be guided by the principles of fairness, objectivity, impartiality and lawfulness.

The Business Ombudsman shall be neutral in the processing of the application and shall not represent the applicant or that administrative body, the legitimacy of decision/action of which is questioned by the applicant.

The Business Ombudsman shall try to reach consensus by protecting fair balance between the interests of the relevant parties.

The Business Ombudsman shall have the right not to testify on information that has been confided to him/her as the Business Ombudsman. The Business Ombudsman shall retain this right after termination of authority.

• Main source of information is direct contact with tax payer conducted through following forms and means:
  • Meeting with taxpayer, inter alia, via different business and branch associations;
  • Application of the tax payer, including the ones directed from the Government and/or Parliament of Georgia;
  • Phone and electronic communication means, including through social network;
• An important source of identification of the problematic issues and trends represents itself Dispute Council at the Ministry of Finance, the meeting of which, as from 22^nd October 2013, is attended by the representative of the Business Ombudsman having the member status and, therefore, we are enabled to state our position during deliberation process of the petitions. 
• An efficient mean of receiving information is the working group established by the Business Ombudsman consisting from auditors and lawyers, which is convened on a regular basis and is deliberating different problematic issues. The working group is not limited to discuss tax related matters only, but brings to the light all the issues which are topical for the development and contributing business in Georgia.
• The staff of Business Ombudsman’s Office receives information also from communication with business and branch associations and other NGOs. The meeting with them is to be conducted on a defined periodic basis, also upon specific necessity.

The problems revealed by the Office of Business Ombudsman by the nature of origin can be divided in two parts:

   a) problems arisen because of the flaws of the legislation;

   ბ) problems arisen during enforcement of the law, e.g. administration problems.

The reaction of the Business Ombudsman’s Office differs according to the type of problem, namely:

- If the problem is created during enforcement of the law (wrongful administration), in such a case there is conducted exhaustive study of all the circumstances, and based on the examination and analyzing of all such circumstances, the recommendation of behalf of Business Ombudsman is to be prepared and to be presented to respective administrative body. There is also conducted monitoring of the performance of the recommendation till the end of the administrative proceedings.

- If the problem arises because of the flaw of the legislation, there is to be prepared the opinion and the project of normative act on behalf of Business Ombudsman, in order to discuss it in a working format with respective government agency and interested business entities. After the working process, the finalized opinion and project is to be presented to respective Ministry having the purpose of progressing to next procedural steps.