The penalties imposed on companies for different fiscal violations are exaggerated and run counter to the measures to increase the benevolent fiscal compliance and taxpayer education level announced by the Ministry of Finance, considers Veaceslav Ciobanu, representative of the Association of Professional Accountants and Auditors.
In a roundtable meeting centering on the fiscal and customs policy for 2014, organized by the think tank “Expert-Grup”, Veaceslav Ciobanu said the fines for the nonuse of cash registers vary between 10,000 and 50,000 lei, which is a lot for a small or medium-sized company, according to him.
“Such violations are due to the qualifications of employees and the errors they can make because they lack knowledge. The employers are often unable to employ skilled workers because they cannot pay them. Furthermore, there are cases when the Tax Inspectorate employees provoke the entities to work without cash registers. Also, the legislation does not clearly say when the registers are used,” said Veaceslav Ciobanu.
He also said that the penalty for not presenting information about the transactions performed by private individuals is also too harsh. “It is suggested extending the list of entities that must present such information to the tax bodies - public notaries, the National Social Insurance House, the pawnshops, the Ministry of Justice, the employees of the ICT sector. If they do not provide the required information, they will face fines equal to the value of the transaction carried out by the private individual.
Under the law, the banks are the main providers of information. “The value of banks’ transactions can be 1 million lei and even more. Do you imagine a fine of 100%?” asked Elizaveta Foca, adviser at the Banks Association of Moldova. She said the Association will demand reviewing the penalty.
