Estonia, Financial Services, Markets and Companies

Egon Veermäe.

Head of the supervision department of the Tax and Customs Board Egon Veermäe state that major violations that appeared during checks concerned, yet again, tax calculations reflecting fictitious bills.

The institution states that the number of checks that end with a discovery of a violation is still high, reaching 80 per cent of checks carried out.

In fighting against value added tax frauds, the tax administration has discovered a total of 263 cases in the first half of the year where people who wanted to be entered into the VAT register did not operate enterprises that actually worked.

The Tax and Customs Board is also prioritising prevention of paying undeclared wages. In the beginning of the year, the board selected 1,000 enterprises in the case of which there is a high risk of paying undeclared wages. The enterprises were sent memorandums, informing them of uncompetitive wages paid to employees in comparison to the average level in the region and in the relevant sector.

“46% of recipients of letters improved their payment of taxes after the information was sent to them,” said Veermäe. The most efficient solution was informing both the enterprise as well as its employees of the problem.