TIRANA, May 18 – Companies which have their financial statements certified by one of the ten auditors selected by the tax administration are less likely to undergo inspections by tax authorities, says Albania’s General Tax Directorate.
The tax administration has selected ten auditors, including three of the Big Four auditors and several other international and Albanian audit firms to carry out the certification of financial statements for the next four years.
The selection comes after the Socialist Party-led government eased some doing business procedures for 2017 but left unchanged the country’s tax burden, one of the highest in the region with the corporate income tax and the withholding tax on dividends, rents and capital gains having increased by 5 percent to 15 percent since 2014.
“The auditing and certification of financial and tax statements by reputable audit firms is considered a ‘positive’ element in the entirety of elements determining whether a taxpayer should be selected to undergo inspection based on the assessment carried by the risk-based analysis,” says the tax administration.
Authorities say the certification by the selected companies is not compulsory and cannot be carried out with the same company for more than four years.
Tax authorities warn the selected companies face the risk of paying fines at 50 percent of the tax obligation owed by businesses in case tax statements have not been fairly reported.
Albania’s tax administration has been receiving technical assistance by U.S. and EU experts under a USAID-funded project to increase the efficiency of tax collection with a focus on investigating large-scale evaders by adopting a risk-based approach to tax audits, improving intelligence gathering for tax fraud investigations and building capacity to enforce tax compliance.
Since more than a year, the General Tax Directorate has installed a new IT system, adopted a new risk-based compliance management approach and is implementing an updated organizational structure.
The 10 selected auditors:
- Deloitte Audit Albania
- ILD-99 Audit
- MAZARS
- nHEuroConsult
- Studio L. E. A. L. Auditing
- Grant Thornton &Holly & Endi Auditing
- UHY Elite
- KPMG
- ASIE
- Pricewaterhouse Coopers Albania
