ATK plans law to close troubled businesses

According to the new director of ATK, Ilir Murtezaj, for just the first two months of this year, there have been declared a thousand and 691 fines worth a total of 1.1m euros to businesses that have not respected the laws in force.

Murtezaj has not indicated which public companies are the biggest debtors, but it is found that Kosovo Telekom is the biggest debtor in the ATK.

We need to understand as a message to the entire business community that treatment has to be equal for all taxpayers. This is not some kind of pressure, this is an obligation from the tax officer to respect the law... Currently, the level of debts in the Tax Administration is about 330m euros, which is a high amount, meaning about 70 percent of this year's revenue plan... Within the framework of these 300m euros there are many debts from public companies, social companies”, Murtezaj says.

Another problem remains the high rate of informality by 31.7 percent.

Murtezaj in an interview for Kosova Prees says there are currently about 30,000 taxpayers who are equipped with fiscal crates, while the issue of implementation for is a phenomenon that, despite many activities being conducted on the ground by ATK officials, even actions undertaken with fines still continue to be a disturbing and unacceptable phenomenon for ATK and society.

He says ATK wants a law that enables the closure of irresponsible businesses that are not aware of fines.

The Law for ATK is under way, and we as an institution have given our recommendations to establish a judicial basis so that in cases when they are in line for the same violation of not allowing fiscal coupons, there may be legal opportunities in ATK that make the closure of those businesses. Not in order to scare, but in order to create the possibility of law enforcement... There have been cases of paying taxes that probably up to 2030 fines being pronounced within the year, despite these fines that are nicely high, have still continued not to issue fiscal coupons”, he points out.

While, for numerous business complaints, Murtezaj acknowledges that ATK has failed to create all possibilities for them.

“Today we have very complaints, there are taxpayers in large numbers who are interested in working and acting 100 percent in accordance with the law, but from once on we as officials by not creating that opportunity they also have to find alternative ways for their actions. So we become self-critical that we haven't managed to create all possibilities... for policy issues there are options from the business community, there are odas that, among them, raised their concerns about any legal provisions and there is communication between law sponsors and the business community to harmonise taxpayers' demands in order to facilitate the work and taxpayers<1>, Murtesaj points out.

Murtezaj says there are about 88 thousand taxpayers in Kosovo, while the largest fiscal reform, according to him, will be the TV gathering. The US from the border to the interior of the country, but this will happen only after the second-read law is passed in the Kosovo Assembly.

But challenging for ATK remains the revenue plan for 2019, which is 516m euros, or 16 percent more than last year's plan. In the first two months of this year, ATK has managed over 88m euros.