TIRANA, Jan. 13 – Four months after its launch, the nationwide campaign against informality has shifted its focus to big businesses whose prospects of receiving heavy fines have considerably reduced after the Constitutional Court recently suspended a newly adopted law increasing penalties on tax evasion.
The tax administration has undertaken a new campaign that will focus on auditing warehouse inventories to check if big businesses were engaged in tax evasion. The inspection comes after big businesses were left a three-month deadline which expired at the end of December 2015 to declare the discrepancies between their books and warehouse inventory.
However, even under the old legislation in force businesses risk seizure of goods and fines of 50,000 lek (€354) to 1 million lek (€7,000) for failing to comply with rules and not providing information.
Gjergj Buxhuku, the administrator of the Konfindustria business association, has called on inspectors to be careful with the penalties because many of the enterprises are already on the brink of bankruptcy due to crisis effects.
On Dec. 23 last year, Albania’s Constitutional Court announced it has suspended the implementation of some newly-adopted legal changes that would increase fines on tax evasion and other informal economy offences by up to 50-fold. The court said the suspension would be valid until it makes a final ruling on a complaint filed by a small businesses’ association.
The new changes to the tax procedures law envisage fines of up to 10 million lek (€71,000) on big businesses operating in the wholesale trade for not issuing tax receipts, compared to a previous 200,000 lek (€1,411). Fines on small businesses have also increased 10-fold from 50,000 lek (€353) to 500,000 lek (€3,529) starting Nov. 12.
The business community has criticized the aggressiveness of the campaign and the tough penalties as not serving to improve the business climate.
