The persons who will commit tax evasion could be exempted from criminal liability if they accept to voluntarily pay, during 30 days, the damage caused to the budget by the offense. Such an amendment to the Penal Code was proposed for debates by the Ministry of Finance, IPN reports.

The bill authors aim to reduce the role of the judiciary in this process to a minimum because, if the offense is discovered during an inspection carried out by inspectors of the State Tax Service and the person pays damage, the Service will not send the relevant materials to the competent bodies.

The informative note to the bill says that when the sum of the fiscal obligations is diminished, the fiscal body imposes penalties in the form of a fine of 30% of the diminished sum, plus penalty. The avoidance of the declaration of fiscal obligations is punished with a fine of 100% of the diminished sum, plus penalty. “In these conditions, when the taxpayer voluntarily pays the undeclared fiscal obligations, plus a fine of 100% of the undeclared sum and the delay penalty, within 30 days, the budget will recover the damage caused to it,” says the note.

Therefore, given that the sum paid by the taxpayer can be by up to 200% higher than the damage caused to the budget, the penal norm will achieve its goal of constraint and persuasion. Thus, the prosecution will only lead to costs that will never generate benefits.