All those individuals, such as those who have dependent children and those who do not, but after completing the Annual Personal Income Declaration (DIVA 2025) resulted in a credit surplus or overpaid tax, are entitled to receive this amount as compensation in their bank accounts.
The right to apply for compensation for any category is not lost for 5 years. The deadline for reviewing the request for compensation by the tax administration is up to 2 months.
"There is no specific legal deadline for submitting a refund request. Individuals' right to compensation or reimbursement is not lost for 5 years. If not claimed this year, the amount remains as a surplus for individuals for up to 5 years."
"But if it is requested to be transferred to a bank account, the request will have to be completed and the supporting documentation submitted. Otherwise, it is a surplus that remains valid in the individuals' account," Rozana Çelmeta, director of business processes at the General Directorate of Taxes, previously explained to Monitor.
But for the compensation to be received in the bank account, an online application must be completed in the e-Filing system, supporting documents must be uploaded, including the family certificate, receipts for children's educational expenses for those parents whose annual income is below 1.2 million lek per year, and the IBAN of the bank account in pdf format (either extracted from the account application or obtained at the bank counter).
The beneficiaries of the compensation are both individuals who will result in overpaid tax, after deducting child expenses in the amount of 48 thousand lek per year for each dependent child and 120 thousand lek for education for individuals with incomes below 1.2 million lek, but also individuals who do not have children, but result in a surplus from the tax recalculation.
In addition to these categories, for the first time with the completion of DIVA 2025, compensation will also benefit those individuals who do not have dependent children, but who, from the annual recalculation of the tax, result in overpayment.
How to apply for all categories
Beneficiary categories in addition to correctly filling in the bank details in the "Bank details" section in e-Filing and the application form with the text
“I, the undersigned XY with identification number I….. request to be reimbursed through my bank account, the amount of overpaid tax of X lek after completion by DIVA 2025.”
In addition, if the applicant has dependent children and benefits from compensation after recognizing expenses worth 48 thousand lek for each child, he must upload as documentation, the family certificate and the IBAN number of the bank account in pdf format (either extracted from the application or obtained from the bank).
Individuals who are entitled to a deduction for educational expenses for children in the maximum amount of 120 thousand lek, in addition to the family certificate, the IBAN number of the bank account must also upload the fiscalized invoices for educational expenses to the system, in order to justify them.
The category of individuals without children but who result in overpaid tax also have the right to request compensation in their bank account.
In addition to completing the text request, they must also upload IBAN documentation to the system.
Watch the tutorial video produced by Monitor that explains the step-by-step procedure for applying for compensation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhAfcIYJxEk
In order to ensure the submission of accurate data and avoid delays in the refund process, the tax administration has published guidelines for declaring accurate bank account data.
The instructions for declaring a bank account are as follows: Click here to open the tutorial
According to taxes, filling out the bank account is necessary to continue the refund procedure from the Tax Administration.
77 thousand individuals will benefit from compensation for children
The deadline for completing DIVA 2025 ended on March 31, 2026. In total, 164,263 individual income tax returns were completed for 2025, an increase of 25% compared to the same period last year.
According to Finance Minister Petrit Malaj, around 77 thousand individuals are expected to benefit from compensation from the DIVA system for children under the age of 18.
The system has generated a total fund of 1.4 billion lek for reimbursement to individuals with credit surplus. So far, only 670 million lek have been requested from individuals to be transferred to their bank accounts./ taken from Monitor.al
