How to Read a Serbian Paušal Tax Decision: Fields, Deadlines, Appeals

Last updated: August 2026. Reflects the Zakon o porezu na dohodak građana ("Sl. glasnik RS", with amendments consolidated through br. 6/2026), the Zakon o doprinosima za obavezno socijalno osiguranje, the Zakon o poreskom postupku i poreskoj administraciji, and the Uredba o bližim uslovima, kriterijumima i elementima za paušalno oporezivanje ("Sl. glasnik RS", br. 94/2019 … 115/2025).

What the rešenje actually decides

The annual rešenje determines every payment you make for twelve months. It states one number — your paušalno utvrđen prihod — and derives four monthly obligations from it. Nothing else you do during the year changes those amounts.

That base is the tax base for income tax (ZPDG čl. 33 st. 1 i st. 3) and the contribution base for social insurance (ZDOSO čl. 22 st. 3). One figure, two uses.

A new rešenje each January is not an annual re-approval of your paušal status. Under ZPDG čl. 42 st. 4 that status runs indefinitely, until it is established that the conditions for it have ceased. The yearly decision only re-prices it.

When it arrives, and why no date is guaranteed

No statutory deadline was found governing when the Poreska uprava must issue the annual rešenje. Not in the ZPDG, not in the Uredba. Anyone who tells you it "must" arrive by a fixed date is describing a habit, not a rule.

What is documented is one year's practice. The Tax Administration announced that delivery of the 2026 decisions, together with a report on the method used to determine the lump-sum income, began on 19 January 2026 and continued in the days that followed. The first 2026 advance instalment was due 18 February 2026, moved from 15 February because of public holidays.

Treat mid-to-late January as the expected window and nothing more.

Note the second document in that announcement. Alongside the rešenje, the Poreska uprava delivers a report on how the lump-sum income was determined — the working behind the number. Most paušalci open the decision and never look at it.

Where to find it: the tax mailbox on ePorezi

The rešenje is delivered electronically, by being posted into your tax mailbox — the poresko sanduče — on the ePorezi portal at eporezi.purs.gov.rs. It is not emailed to you, and it is not mailed to your registered seat.

You reach it with the same credentials you already use to file electronically: a qualified electronic certificate or an eID login. The mailbox is a section of the portal, not a notification — nothing pings your phone when a document lands in it.

One wrinkle explains most "it never arrived" reports. If an accountant or another authorised person holds the ePorezi authorisation for your PIB, the decision is delivered where they can see it. It was served on you all the same.

The document, field by field

Every paušal rešenje carries the same nine elements: the assessed base, the four monthly obligations, the treasury accounts, the BOP, the payment deadline and the appeal instruction.

Layout varies between tax offices and between years, and the labels on your copy may be worded differently. The substance below is what every rešenje has to carry.

The four rates add up to 45.05% of the assessed base — 35.05% in contributions plus 10% income tax. If the four monthly lines on your rešenje do not sum to 45.05% of the monthly base, something on the document needs explaining.

There is no tax-free allowance. A paušalac owes the full assessed amount in a month with zero revenue exactly as in a month with a full order book (ZPDG čl. 38; ZDOSO čl. 22 st. 3).

The payment block: model 97 and the BOP

Everything you need to pay is printed on the rešenje. The bank form takes five fields.

The BOP is the piece that goes wrong. It is your identity inside the treasury's accounting, and a wrong or last-year's BOP does not bounce: the money leaves your account, reaches the Treasury, and sits unallocated against nobody's obligation. The obligation itself stays open and accrues interest at the NBS reference rate plus 10 percentage points (ZPPPA čl. 75 st. 1–4) — see what a late paušal payment costs.

Where the number on your rešenje comes from

The base is not a percentage of the average salary, and it is not arbitrary.

You are grouped by pretežna delatnost (ZPDG čl. 41 st. 1–2), and Uredba čl. 4 st. 2 then sets a polazna osnovica: the average monthly salary in the relevant city or opština over the last twelve months, multiplied by the number of employees there and by the koeficijent delatnosti for your activity code, divided by the population there.

Two rules change the outcome. For the codes listed in Uredba čl. 4 st. 4 — which include 6201 and 6202, the two most common IT codes — the Republic-level figures are used instead of local ones, so your municipality does not affect the base at all.

Then Uredba čl. 5 applies a ladder of coefficients: registration age, the taxpayer's own age, disability, extended parental absence, certified old crafts, and a zone multiplier that reaches only a short listed set of codes. Their cumulative product cannot fall below 0.5 (Uredba čl. 5 st. 2–3).

The full derivation is in the guide to the paušal tax base. It is the only way to tell whether the number you were sent is the number the formula produces.

Why the amount went up

Most increases are the transition cap doing its job. Uredba čl. 6 st. 1 caps the annual increase at 10% per year until the correct level is reached, through 2027. A base sitting below its formula value therefore climbs in yearly steps rather than in one jump, and a roughly 10% rise on an otherwise unchanged business is the expected shape of that.

The cap has an exception. Under Uredba čl. 6 st. 2 the 10% limit does not apply where the increase results from a change of activity code, of municipality, or of business location. Move your sedište, or change your pretežna delatnost, and the new base can arrive in full in a single year.

If your amount rose by far more than a tenth and nothing about your registration changed, check it against the derivation rather than absorbing it.

If the base is wrong: two different remedies

These are separate instruments with separate deadlines, and people routinely reach for the wrong one.

A change of pretežna delatnost has its own timing: the return is due by 31 January of the year following the change, and Uredba čl. 3 st. 3–5 makes lateness concrete — filed on time, the change applies from the next tax period; filed late, the Poreska uprava may apply it retroactively from the first day of the period in which the change occurred.

An appeal does not buy you time to pay. ZPPPA čl. 147 st. 1 reads "Žalba ne odlaže izvršenje poreskog upravnog akta." The monthly obligations stay due and interest keeps running while the žalba is pending.

Only the second-instance body can postpone execution, and only where you document that paying before the act becomes final would cause substantial economic harm (čl. 147 st. 2). That same body must decide the appeal within 60 days (čl. 147 st. 4).

On the appeal fee: an administrative taksa applies, but the amounts in the Zakon o republičkim administrativnim taksama have been revised and the figures circulating on Serbian blogs are out of date. Confirm the current amount with the Poreska uprava before you file.

Neither route is a substitute for professional advice where a disputed activity classification or real money is involved. Preduzmi tracks what you owe and when; it does not argue your case.

If you are sure it never arrived

Work through this before concluding anything.

1. Log into ePorezi and open the tax mailbox. In the overwhelming majority of cases the decision is there, unread, from January.
2. Check who holds your portal authorisation. If your accountant is the authorised person for your PIB, the document was delivered to their view of the mailbox. It is still served on you.
3. Confirm your registration details are current at APR. A stale seat or contact record is the ordinary cause of a genuinely missing document.
4. Contact the Poreska uprava branch for your registered seat if the mailbox is genuinely empty.

While you look, remember what does not pause. The monthly deadline in ZPDG čl. 110 t. 1 runs regardless of whether you have read the decision, and so does the 15-day appeal period. An unopened document is a served document. The month-by-month view of the rest of the year is in the compliance calendar.

Not to be confused: the eko taksa rešenje

The local environmental fee arrives on a different document, from a different authority, with a different reference number. Your paušal rešenje comes from the Poreska uprava and covers republic-level tax and contributions. The eko taksa rešenje comes from your lokalna poreska administracija, and it typically stays valid across years instead of being reissued each January.

Paying one obligation against the other document's reference number leaves both unsettled. The eko taksa rules are in the eko taksa guide.

Key takeaways

1. The rešenje fixes one number — the paušalno utvrđen prihod — and everything else on the document is derived from it at a combined 45.05% (ZPDG čl. 38; ZDOSO čl. 44 st. 1).
2. It is deemed served the day it is posted to the ePorezi portal (ZPPPA čl. 36), so the 15-day appeal period can expire before you ever open the mailbox.
3. No statutory deadline governs when the Poreska uprava issues it; the 2026 decisions began arriving on 19 January 2026, but that is an observed date, not a rule.
4. The BOP is your payment identity, entered as the poziv na broj under model 97 — and a wrong one strands the money without ever returning it to you.
5. Payments are due within 15 days of the end of each month (ZPDG čl. 110 t. 1), in full, even in a month with no revenue.
6. An increase of about 10% is the transition cap (Uredba čl. 6 st. 1); a much larger one usually traces to a change of activity code, municipality or location, which the cap does not cover (Uredba čl. 6 st. 2).
7. Two remedies, two clocks: a return by 31 January corrects the base going forward (ZPDG čl. 93 st. 2), an appeal within 15 days attacks the decision itself (ZPPPA čl. 142, 143) — and neither one suspends the monthly payments while it runs (ZPPPA čl. 147 st. 1).

Frequently asked questions

When does a Serbian paušalac receive the annual poresko rešenje?

No statutory deadline governs when the Poreska uprava must issue the annual rešenje, so there is no date you can rely on. In practice it arrives early in the year: the Tax Administration announced that delivery of the 2026 decisions began on 19 January 2026 and continued in the days that followed, with the first advance instalment due on 18 February 2026. That is an observed date for one year, not a rule, so treat it as a guide rather than a promise.

Where is the poresko rešenje delivered for a Serbian paušalac?

It is delivered electronically, by being posted into the taxpayer's tax mailbox (poresko sanduče) on the ePorezi portal at eporezi.purs.gov.rs. It does not arrive by email and it is not sent on paper. If an accountant or another authorised person holds your ePorezi authorisation, the document lands where they can see it, which is why many paušalci believe nothing was ever sent.

Is a Serbian tax rešenje considered delivered if the paušalac never opened the ePorezi portal?

Yes. Under ZPPPA čl. 36 a tax act is deemed served on the day it is posted to the Tax Administration portal, and the same article removes the need for separate consent from anyone who already files tax returns electronically. The 15-day appeal period therefore starts running on the day of posting, whether or not you ever logged in. Checking the mailbox is not optional housekeeping; it is what keeps the remedy available.

What is the BOP on a Serbian paušal tax rešenje?

BOP stands for broj odobrenja za plaćanje, the payment approval number printed on your rešenje. It is the unique reference that routes each transfer to your own tax account, and it goes on the payment form as the poziv na broj under model 97. A wrong or outdated BOP does not bounce the payment back: the money leaves your account and sits unallocated until the tax office reassigns it. Copy it from the current rešenje rather than from last year's saved template.

What is the deadline to appeal a rešenje on paušal tax in Serbia?

Fifteen days from receipt of the tax administrative act, under ZPPPA čl. 142. The appeal is handed in to the first-instance tax office that issued the decision, and the burden of proving the claim rests on the appellant (ZPPPA čl. 143). Because electronic delivery counts as receipt on the day of posting, those fifteen days can already be running before you have read the document. Lodging an appeal does not suspend payment either: under ZPPPA čl. 147 st. 1 the obligation stays due while the appeal is decided.

Why did the paušal tax amount on a Serbian entrepreneur's rešenje increase this year?

Most often because the assessed base is still catching up to its correct level. Uredba čl. 6 st. 1 caps annual increases at 10 percent per year until that level is reached, through 2027, so a base that is below it can rise by up to a tenth each year. That cap does not apply where the increase follows a change of activity code, municipality or business location, under Uredba čl. 6 st. 2, which is why those changes can produce a much larger jump in one step.

What should a Serbian paušalac do if the poresko rešenje never arrived?

Log into ePorezi and open the tax mailbox before doing anything else, because the decision is almost always sitting there. Then check whether an accountant or another authorised person holds the portal authorisation for your PIB, since the document may be visible only to them. If the mailbox is genuinely empty, contact the Poreska uprava branch for your registered seat. A document you have not read suspends nothing: the monthly deadline in ZPDG čl. 110 t. 1 runs regardless, and so does the appeal period.

Does the minimum monthly contribution base apply to a Serbian paušalac?

No. The contribution base for a paušalac is the paušalno utvrđen prihod set by the rešenje, under ZDOSO čl. 22 st. 3. The najniža and najviša monthly contribution bases published for 2026, 51,297 RSD and 732,820 RSD, apply to other categories of insured persons and not to a paušalac's assessed base. Comparing your rešenje against the minimum base is a common source of false alarm.

How can a Serbian paušalac correct a wrong base on the paušal tax rešenje?

There are two separate routes and they do different things. If the scope or turnover of the business changed significantly in the preceding year, ZPDG čl. 93 st. 2 requires a tax return by 31 January of the assessment year, and that corrects the base going forward. If the decision itself is defective, the remedy is an appeal within 15 days of receipt under ZPPPA čl. 142 and čl. 143. The two deadlines are independent, and missing the January return does not extend the appeal period.

Is the eko taksa rešenje the same document as the paušal tax rešenje in Serbia?

No. The paušal tax rešenje comes from the Poreska uprava and sets your republic-level income tax and social contributions. The eko taksa rešenje comes from your local tax administration, carries its own reference number, and typically stays valid across years instead of being reissued every January. Paying one obligation against the other document's reference number leaves both of them unsettled.

Sources

• Zakon o porezu na dohodak građana (ZPDG) — "Sl. glasnik RS", with amendments consolidated through br. 6/2026. Articles cited: 33, 38, 41, 42, 93, 110.
• Zakon o doprinosima za obavezno socijalno osiguranje (ZDOSO) — articles cited: 22, 44, 60.
• Zakon o poreskom postupku i poreskoj administraciji (ZPPPA) — articles cited: čl. 36 (electronic service), čl. 75 (interest), čl. 142 and čl. 143 (appeal), čl. 147 (an appeal does not suspend execution).
• Poreska uprava — Preduzetnici paušalci, which publishes the Uredba o bližim uslovima, kriterijumima i elementima za paušalno oporezivanje ("Sl. glasnik RS", br. 94/2019 … 115/2025) and the official paušal calculator.
• Poreska uprava announcement on the 2026 tax decisions — delivery from 19 January 2026 into the ePorezi tax mailbox; first advance due 18 February 2026.
• ePorezi portal — the tax mailbox where the rešenje is served.
• Republički fond za PIO — osnovice za uplatu doprinosa — the 2026 najniža and najviša monthly contribution bases.