TIRANA, Aug. 12 – A warning by Prime Minister Edi Rama that the government will launch next September a nationwide campaign against informality and tax evasion similar to that on electricity has had an immediate impact on small businesses with long queues reported on the country’s business registration centers.
While it normally takes one day to register with the national registration centre, local media report there are people who haven’t been able to register their businesses for one week due to the overcrowding of business registration centers.
Most of the people registering their businesses are street vendors, barbers, tailors, small store owners who are striving to make ends meet at a time when household consumption has also been hit by the payment of accumulated unpaid bills.
“Manjola, a woman who used to work in a garment factory is one of the people waiting for days in front of the National Registration without being able to get her tax identification number,” reports the Monitor magazine.
Now an unlicensed tailor who works from home earning less than 30,000 lek (€211) a month, she has to pay the house rent, feed her two year-old-child at a time when her husband is currently unemployed.
She has been unable to register for two weeks but finally offered registration by middlemen in return for a 2,000 lek (€14) bribe, the magazine reports. However, the problem is the purchase of cash register, worth 400-500 euros which she cannot afford with the current income.
“She is shocked because she has been photographed by tax inspectors and fears she will have her Euro 500 sawing machine, a present from her brother, seized.”
Her plan B is travelling to Germany to seek asylum as thousands have done during this year although the chances of obtaining the status are almost zero for citizens of Albania.
The Albanian government is planning legal changes to make informality and tax evasion punishable by prison, similar to electricity theft. A nationwide campaign to curb electricity thefts and collect accumulated unpaid bills launched in late 2014 has proved successful, bringing the Albanian government more than Euro 100 million in extra income.
