State Fiscal Inspectorate hopes structure changes will produce better results

The State Main Fiscal Inspectorate (SMFI) has worked under a modified structure from February 1. The Inspectorate’s head Sergiu Puscuta says that though the fiscal body ensured the accumulation of incomes in the budget and worked with the indebted taxpayers, its structure did not meet the requirements of an efficient fiscal administration. According to Puscuta, the State Main Fiscal Inspectorate was created many years ago and the modifications to its structure made meanwhile were ad hoc, resulting from the necessity of solving current problems, without making outlooks. Similar opinions were expressed by the technical missions of the IMF that came to Moldova to help reform the financial system. The introduction of changes was also discussed within the Fiscal Service. Speaking about the made changes, which were stipulated in the Strategy for Developing the Fiscal Service for 2006-2010, Sergiu Puscuta said that they decided to create three administration blocks within the Fiscal Service, as the IMF proposed. The first block includes the fiscal administration, arrears management and fiscal control divisions. These divisions as well as the insolvability procedures division are administered by the first deputy head of the SMFI. The practice of cancelling certain debts turned out to be vicious as the companies accumulated new debts, fact demonstrated during the fiscal amnesty. The economic entities were cancelled debts of over 3 billion lei. But the situation will change when the insolvency procedure will be applied to the companies that do not fulfill their fiscal obligations. The fiscal authorities intend to propose amendments to the legislation, designed to simplify the insolvency procedure. The second deputy head is in charge of the divisions that verify how the fiscal administration policies of the first block are implemented. These divisions and the legal and strategic management and activity organization divisions will make sure that the policies are implemented by the fiscal zonal inspectorates. The third deputy head will manage the activity of the taxpayers and income supervision divisions, the implementation of information technologies and the processing of information. The functionality of the fiscal administration system will be thus insured at internal level. The personnel and training division and the security and internal audit division will be administered by the SMFI head. The internal audit division has been recently created and forms part of the security division. It will be a lever for checking the activity of the other divisions. Besides internal audit and inspection, the processes taking place within the Fiscal Service will be also checked. The new organizational structure of the State Main Fiscal Inspectorate was implemented two month ago. According to the SMFI head, the personnel got adapted to it quicker than expected and the productivity is higher. The Fiscal Service now works at a higher pace also because the divisions are headed by people younger than 35 (about 40%) and owing to reshuffles. The responsibilities of the subdivisions have been strictly delimited and there are no double functions. Referring to the impact that the new structure will have on taxpayers, Sergiu Puscuta said that they aimed to diminish the human factor. The information technologies under implementation will enable to send the reports, statements and other financial documents through the Internet, while the taxes and duties will be calculated automatically, without the intervention, sometimes subjective, of the fiscal inspectors. The consultative and relations with the taxpayers divisions will be substituted with the Phone Call Center that the taxpayers could use to put questions about the calculation and payment of taxes and duties. The questions and answers will be recorded. If the answers of the fiscal employees are not full and will have as result the incorrect payment of taxes and duties by the taxpayers, these will not pay the fines and penalties calculated for incorrectness, only the basic taxes. The fiscal employees had the possibility of learning from the experience of the Fiscal Service of Lithuania. Presently, the SMFI works on the software program and plans to launch the Phone Call Center by this yearend.