He points out that the reason for the revision is the fact that due to the deletion of the companies from the Central Register of Business Entities, based on the final decisions on the bankruptcy proceedings from December 2012 to April 2018, non-compliant tax liabilities of EUR 77.6 million were recorded.
"The debt of active taxpayers in which bankruptcy or liquidation is in progress on December 31st, according to Tax Administration data, in 2017 was 95.4 million euros. This audit has specifically identified the problem that owners or management structures of companies start bankruptcy and shut down the companies, where there is a high amount of tax debt, and after that, the same persons establish new companies that continue to operate. In that part, DRI gave recommendations to the Tax Administration to disable to "individualize" the profit and socialize the loss by abusing the bankruptcy institution. We reconciled the findings and recommendations with the Tax Administration (TA) that would allow this state authority to be more efficient in collecting public revenues. TA also initiated an amendment to Article 9 of the Law on the Prevention of Illegal Business by the initiative of the Ministry of Finance, in order to provide a mechanism for reducing the intensity of this phenomenon," said Radulović.
In order to determine the efficiency of the collection of customs duties, the Supreme State Audit performs a special audit of the success that should answer the question of whether customs duties are sufficiently efficient, given the fact that the recorded customs debt at the end of 2017 amounted to EUR 4.52 million.
"Here too, the problem with debt collection from the previous period has been identified by those who are in bankruptcy or liquidation or have been deleted from CRPS, which in total debt participates with about 50 percent. Generally, it is an uncollectable debt. We are now in the phase of making recommendations. In recent years, the Customs Administration has improved its business in this segment, but the realization of the recommendations should help to raise the billing system to an even higher level," Radulović adds.
DRI, as he stresses, has pointed out for a long time in its reports that the state must have a systemic response to the identified problem of non-payment of public revenues from those who are in bankruptcy or are terminated by the CRPS.
"Given that the Law on bankruptcy amendment is ongoing, we believe that the law can also have benefited from DRI's findings in order to identify the problem and produce a better text of the bill to be passed to the Assembly for adoption," emphasizes the Senator DRI.
The text by Pobjeda, on September 24th, 2018, read more at CdM
