Opposition Socialist Party MPs opposed the new changes saying that they were being introduced in a short period and that the customs administration is not specialized to collect excise on domestic production
TIRANA, April 10 – Starting from next July, the customs administration will be the only institution collecting excise tariffs, according to a draft law approved by majority MPs at the parliamentary economy committee this week.
The draft law will strip the tax administration of collecting excise on cigarettes and alcoholic beverages and domestically produced fuel by the ARMO refinery in an effort to improve excise collection, the second most important tax after VAT.
Opposition Socialist Party MPs opposed the new changes saying that they were being introduced in a short period and that the customs administration is not specialized to collect excise on domestic production.
However, deputy Finance Minister Alfred Rushaj argued that the customs administration has been training on this change since one year and would be more efficient in collecting excise taxes as a considerable part of raw material for domestically produced excise goods is imported and has its system computerized.
Introducing the draft law at a meeting with the Albanian Business Consultative Council in late 2011, Economy and Trade Minister Nasip Naco said “the collection of excise for imported and domestically produced products is a key condition for the customs administration based on EU member country experience.” “The gist of this law stands at the computerization of all procedures through an online platform for all businesses increasing both transparency and efficiency,” added the Minister.
Finance Ministry data show that despite the excise rates have been raised for several products such as tobacco and some oil products, excise revenue in 2011 rose by only 4 percent to 40 billion lek accounting for 13.3 percent of total tax revenue.
Changes to beer, tobacco excise
The new draft law will also be accompanied with some changes to excise rates for alcoholic beverages and tobacco. The draft law foresees the excise tariffs for beer with an alcoholic percentage with 6 percent and above will be raised by 20 percent.
In an open letter, the country’s biggest beer producers opposed the changes saying that the new changes to the excise rates and the guarantee component foreseeing pre-payment of excise for raw material, products under production and finished ones would damage their activity.
The excise collection for tobacco remains unchanged at 70 lek for 20-cigarrete packets but will be collected at 3,500 lek per 1000 cigarettes in order to prevent tax evasion for 10-and 25 cigarette packets.
The draft law also obliges home producers to declare their distilling equipment used for raki and wine production foreseeing fines of up to 200,000 lek.
