Law/Payment terms : Amendments in sight?

Law no. 69-21 (1) on payment terms, which came into force on July 1, 2023, continues to give even the most seasoned businesses and professionals a hard time. Revolutionary in spirit, with the introduction of a fine in the event of non-payment, recovered without formality by the tax authorities, the law would still present difficulties of application that the legislator had not thought of. This is the nature of all legislation. As a stakeholder in the implementation of the law, now in its 4th quarter, the Association of Chartered Accountants (Ordre des experts-comptables) had issued a standard (2) designed to codify the mandate of practitioners in validating the statements of unpaid debts that must accompany the quarterly declaration (See L’Economiste no.6618 of 13/10/2023). The Association of Chartered Accountants has just sent an e-mail to its members on the difficulties they are likely to encounter in carrying out their various missions, obviously in connection with the law on payment deadlines. Clearly, there are likely to be many questions. What payment date should be taken into account, for example, when a customer sends a cheque to his supplier’s bank after the deadline? Is it the date on which the cheque was actually delivered, or the date shown on the bank statement? This question has already been clarified by the General Tax Directorate (DGI). “ It is preferable to pay suppliers by bank transfer rather than by cheque. And to avoid any technical problems, it’s advisable to make arrangements a week in advance if the company wishes to pay on the due date «, suggested chartered accountant Mohamed Lahyani. What about statements of unpaid invoices coinciding with the appointment of a new statutory auditor? How to deal with late invoicing? These are just a few of the questions that remain unanswered, and which will either have to be answered by the tax authorities, or be the subject of a reworking of the law on payment deadlines. Such an adjustment will not be possible in the short term, as the law will first have to be fully applied in 2025, with its extension to companies with sales of over 2 million Dirhams (USD 200,000) and less than 10 million Dirhams (USD 1 million). Chartered accountants are therefore invited to send their questions and queries to the National Council of the Association of Chartered Accountants, which will be examined by an ad hoc committee tasked with addressing the issue within the Association. Proposals for improvement, which were to be submitted by Wednesday April 24 at the latest, will be used to identify areas for improvement and act accordingly.

Hassan EL ARIF