Bussiness glossary

(Desk) Officer

Used to describe any white-collar SGT employee that might use TMS (not only managers). Example:
data entry guy = officer, tea boy = not an officer.

Accounting Period

Interval of time for which tax is to be declared. Relevant in the income tax context only (an equivalent
of the VAT term of similar meaning is tax period). Accounting period in the context of income tax
does reflect the tax year (and as such, this terminology has been used interchangeably in the TMS-
IT).

Additional Tax (AT)

Omani term used to describe interest

Approve

In TMS, depending on the document type, can be both approving a document (for example, a
revised tax return) or approving a decision (for example, decision entered by an inspector on a tax
waiver application). In the latter case, approving might result in rejection of the
document/application if the approved decision is a decision to reject.

Business Activity

Any activity, including in particular, commercial, industrial, professional or vocational activity,

performed independently against Consideration.

Claim

In the context of TMS, claim is a demand (for something) on SGT side from the taxpayer (elsewhere
it's used to represent demand for both directions).

Claim Amount / Balance Amount

Claims generally track two amounts in TMS. Claim amount is the original size of the SGT demand. For
example, if taxpayer files income tax return where he/she needs to pay 700 OMR, then claim would
be created with the amount of 700 OMR. Claim balance amount (often just called balance amount)
track the unpaid part of the claim. Continuing the previous example, if when taxpayer pays 500 OMR
for the claim, balance amount of the claim would be reduced from 700 OMR to 200 OMR.

Claim Due Date

Date by which the claim balance needs to be paid. More simply, deadline for payment. After due
date passes, additional tax (interest) starts to be charged on the unpaid part of claim.

Compound Interest
Interest calculation method when interest amount is charged on both principal sum and previously
charged interest amount. Total interest amount charged will depend on both the interest rate and
compounding frequency (rate at which interest charged is compounded with the principal amount).
For example, if compound interest rate is 12% per year, interest is compounded annually, and initial
tax due (and unpaid) stands at 1,000 OMR, then interest charged first year shall be 120 OMR (1,000 x
12% = 120). Interest charged on second year shall be 134.4 OMR ((1,000 + 120) x 12% = 134.4), and
so on. Same example with different compounding frequency would yield different results with same
interest rate. For example, in the case of monthly compounding frequency first year interest would
be 125.8 OMR ((1.0112 -1) x 1,000), while second year interest would already be 142.9 OMR ((1.01 24 -
1.0112) x 1,000). Compound interest is used in most of the financial institutions (except for ones that
practice Islamic Banking).

CR Number

Company Registration number. Issued by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

Data Entry (Personnel)

An employee of the SGT whose main responsibility is to transfer information from the paper form to
the electronic one (i.e. entering tax returns to the computer). Can also be called a clerk.

Declaration of Details (or Declaration of Business Particulars)

A document holding the information (name, accounting period, contact info, etc.) of a taxpayer
submitted upon first registering the taxpayer. If some details need to be changed or new info added,
similar form must be submitted (in this case called a Declaration of Modification). In TMS, taxpayer
info page is the page holding the information, Declaration of Details is used for entering the
information to the page and Declaration of Modification is used to change the existing information. 

Document

In the TMS context, this can be any TMS data structure that can acquire document number (i.e.
Income tax return = document; tax suite = document; receipt = not a document; summoning letter
sent to taxpayer = not a document (in TMS context, although clearly a document in general
language)).

Final Return of Income (FRI)

Income tax return submitted by the taxpayer on a special form when all the accounts for the last tax
year are completed. The accounts are generally also attached to the form. The deadline for
submitting the FRI is six months after the end of the tax year (if tax year ends on 31.12, then 30.06).

Front Office (Personnel)

Employees whose main responsibility is to service the walk-in taxpayers, generally an employee of
the Taxpayers' Services Department. Majority of SGT employees do interact with taxpayers at one
point or another (like inspectors or DGs) but most of them are not front office. Example: taxpayer
services employee who's issuing no objection certificates and accepting payment for them = front
office employee; tax inspector meeting a taxpayer representative for questioning = not a front office.

Master

A terminology that has crept in from the customer. Basically means a set of master data items of the
same category. Examples of masters: country master (list of countries), bank master (list of all
supported banks).

Notification

A piece of correspondence sent from SGT to the taxpayer. Is agnostic to the communications
channel (i.e. can be email, snail mail, sms). Can be generated by the system (generally upon
finalization of a document, therefore called a document notification) or entered manually by SGT
staff (for example, a query).

Payment

In the TMS context "payment" is used to describe single transaction of money being paid by the
taxpayer to SGT.

Person

Any natural or juristic Person, public or private or anyone else that could perform Business Activities
including partnerships and unincorporated bodies of Persons.

Portal

Public portal which can be used by anyone for obtaining information and by registered sponsors or
auditors for managing the taxes of the taxpayer they represent. TMS serves as a backend for the
portal.

Posting (a Document, Transaction, Etc.)

Another word coming from the client side (actually, very common terminology when dealing with
Oracle Forms application). Generally not used internally and there's actually no perfect equivalent.
Best to think of it as a finalization of a document and creation of permanent transaction records.

Principal Officer

Every Taxable Person shall have a Principal Officer for the purposes of this Law. 

The Principal Officer shall be the following: 

1) In relation to a Taxable Person who has a Place of Residence in Oman:

Principal Tax

Original amount of tax which taxpayer needs to pay (be refunded) the tax authority (without the
interest).
Printout

Generally means a printable representation of a certain information in the PDF form. Examples of
printouts are: assessment printout (a PDF document with detailed information about the
assessment), refund letter (a PDF document with some standard wording and decision sent to
Ministry of Finance). Generally, this term is used by anyone to mean anything, and should be avoided
when talking with the customer (as they might have a different understanding).

Provisional Return of Income (PRI)

Income tax return submitted by the taxpayer on a special form before all the accounts for the last tax
year are done. The deadline for submission is three months after the end of the tax year. For
example, the taxpayers whose tax year ends on the 31st of December, must submit the PRI before
the 31st of March. 

Receipt

Acknowledgement (from the SGT) that the payment has been made. Generally given (especially
before TMS) when the taxpayer made the payment. Receipts are generally specific to the revenue
account, and single payment can result in multiple receipts being issued (for example, single
taxpayer might be paying for multiple claims of different tax types with a single transaction, or a
single person might be paying for multiple companies he/she owns by a single payment). Can be
provisional (payment is made or claimed to be made but not confirmed yet) or confirmed (usually by
verifying against the bank statement that the payment has reached SGT account). 

Receipt Voucher

A voucher provided by the taxpayer to prove that they have made the payment directly to the
Ministry of Finance. Receipt vouchers are already confirmed when entered.

Registry of VAT Taxable Persons

Definition missing at the moment.

Return for Correction

A name for workflow action that is used to bring the document down in the approval chain (to the
person who can modify it) when it is found the document has some issues. For someone familiar with
standard Nortal workflows, this is equivalent of "Reject" action. "Reject" and "return for correction"
have the same meaning in the context of workflows and might be used interchangeably (at some
point, all "Reject' actions were renamed "Return for correction" because the client felt rejection was
too of a hostile word). Also, "Reject" might be used in some cases if the workflow ends with the
rejection (no corrections requested, rejection is the final decision). 

SGT

Secretariat General for Taxation at the Ministry of Finance.

Simple Interest
Interest calculation method when interest is charged based on the principal tax amount only. I.e. if
the simple interest rate is 12% per year and principal tax due (and unpaid) stands at 1,000 OMR, then
interest charged every year shall be 120 OMR (as long as the unpaid principal amount is 1,000 OMR).
Omani's use simple interest calculation.

Tax

Synonym to Value Added Tax.

Used in when VAT is the only tax type used in the context. 

Taxable Person

Any Person that independently carries out a Business Activity and is registered or required to be

registered under Chapter 3 of Part 3 of the VAT Law.

Tax Authority

Government institution that is authorized to levy and collect taxes. In Oman, this refers to Secretariat
General for Taxation.

Tax Declaration

Used interchangeably with the term tax return.

Tax Inspector (in Reference to Taxpayer)

A SGT employee from Tax Investigation and Assessment department to whom a taxpayer file is
assigned. This terminology is not used very correctly as there are also other tax inspectors from other
departments (for example, collection) to whom taxpayer files can be assigned (same taxpayer might
be assigned to several inspectors from different departments at same time). However, only taxpayer
relations to inspectors in Investigation and Assessment departments are tracked. The inspectors from
other departments might be rather referred to as specialists (for example, collection specialist).
Although this situation largely originated due to our limited understanding of organization at the
point of development, continued usage is justifiable (due to disproportionate importance of
investigation and assessment inspector and same language being used by SGT).

Tax Liability

Taxpayer's debt to the tax authority established either by self-assessed declarations or tax authority
assessment.

Tax Period

Similar to Accounting Period, but not (commonly) used within the context of income tax. Within the
context of VAT, tax period refers to a quarter (period of three months for which taxpayer needs to
submit tax return). Single quarter refers to the certain three moths within the year (meaning first
quarter is JAN-FEB-MAR, second quarter is APR-MAY-JUN and so on; there can be no MAR-APR-
MAY quarter). If used in the context of withholding tax, tax period refers to the single calendar
month (JAN, FEB, etc.). (P.S. With the latest changes in VAT law it might be that tax period for VAT
might both be quarter and month - this is TBD).

Tax Return

A standard form used by the taxpayers to calculate their tax liability. Can be periodic (annual
– income tax, quarterly – VAT), or non-periodic (like WHT).

Tax Year

Period of 12 months (with exceptions) for which tax is due. In the context of value added and
withholding tax, tax year start is 1st of January and end is 31st of December. In the context of income
tax, tax year can start and end at any point of the year. Generally, it is 12 months in length but in the
cases of transition periods, can also be longer (up to 18 months) or shorter.

The Secretary General for Taxation

Highest level official of the SGT. Note that this term refers to a person, while SGT (Secretariat General
for Taxation) refers to the organization. Titles are subject to change in case of re-organization (for
example, if SGT decides to become an independent ministry). In day-to-day business, the person
holding the position is referred to as His Excellency (H.E.). 

TIN

Taxpayer identification number. Income tax only.

TMS

TMS – means either the TMS-IT (especially in the older documents) or the joint TMS-IT and TMS-VAT
solution.

TMS-IT – tax management system developed for Secretariat General of Oman during 2012-2016.
Supports income tax and withholding tax administration.

TMS-VAT – part of the tax management to be developed for Secretariat General of Oman in order

to address VAT administration needs.

Value Added Tax

The Value Added Tax is applied under this Law that is levied on the Import and Supply of Goods and
Services including Deemed Supplies, at each stage of production and distribution and shall, for the
purposes of Chapter Seven and Chapter Eight of Part Eleven, include additional tax charged under
Article 161 of VAT Law and Administrative Penalties imposed under Chapter One, Part Fifteen of this
Law. It also includes the Value Added tax levied on the issue of an invoice mentioning this tax in the
Event mentioned in Paragraph 4 of Article 22.

VAT Group

Definition missing at the moment.

VAT Taxable Person

Synonym to Taxable Person.

VAT Taxable Person is used in a context where more tax types may be involved.
Example: Person has characteristics of Income Tax Taxable Person and VAT Taxable Person