Hundreds of businesses fined over cash registers

TIRANA, Feb. 23 – The tax administration says it has fined 270 businesses a total of 26.7 million lek (190,000 euros) all over the country during controls carried out during the past 40 days. Sources quoted by local media said the fines were imposed on businesses who had not paid taxes, lacked cash registers or had not paid social contributions for their employees.
More than half of companies were fined on cash registers whose use has become compulsory for every small business.
The tax administration said it fined 6,387 small and big businesses a total of around 425 million lek (4.2 million dollars) in some 19,000 controls carried out during the first 10 months of last year.
The General Tax Directorate says only 40,000 small businesses, slightly more than 50 percent of the total have installed cash registers.
According to a recent government decision, only small business owners who have bought compulsory cash registers from authorized companies until February 28, 2011 will benefit reimbursement in local government taxes.
In its annual report, the tax administration said it had fulfilled its 2010 performance with an extra 2 percent of expected revenues, which was mainly a result of increased excise taxes for some products and lowering VAT threshold to 5 million lek of annual turnover compared to 8 million lek in 2009.
This year, government has planned an 11 percent growth in revenues, 2 percent more than under the revised 2010 budget, to achieve a 5.5 percent growth rate.
Latest Finance Ministry data show that despite significant budget cuts in July 2010, government fulfilled only 97.4 percent of its revenue targets which registered 324 billion lek (3.24 billion dollars) or 9 percent more compared to 2009.