WITH DEFICIENCES OF VIEW
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It is necessary for the State Tax Service (STS) to work with the Ministry of Finance in order to identify instruments regarding the full exercise by the fiscal body of the role of administrator for some types of income, managed by other state institutions.
In this context, the Court of Accounts of the Republic of Moldova (CoARM), on August 2, examined the Audit Report on the compliance of public revenue administration by the STS in 2020-2021.
During the audited period, the STS managed to ensure the achievement of the target indicators related to the task of revenue collection both within the national public budget and within the state budget. In 2021, the revenues collected by the STS exceeded the level of 2019, the year before the pandemic, by 20.3% to the national public budget and 15.9% to the state budget.
The revenues administered by the fiscal body to the national public budget and the state budget, as a share in the gross domestic product, had an increasing trend. Thus, the share of revenues administered by the STS to the national public budget constituted 19.5% in 2021, increasing compared to 2019 by 0.9%.
As for taxpayers' arrears, a trend of continuous growth is highlighted. In this way:
- to the national public budget, the arrears increased by 31% in 2020 compared to 2019, and in 2021 there was a 30.3% increase compared to 2020;
- to the state budget, the arrears of economic agents increased in 2020 by 21.6% and in 2021 by 61.0%, compared to the previous period.
The audit certified that, if around 240 million lei were calculated in 2020 as part of the planned fiscal controls and 55% of this amount was collected, then in 2021 the calculated amount amounts to over one billion lei, of which only 14.4% was recovered. The level of collection of the amounts calculated in all fiscal controls is even lower.
Another uncertain aspect is the lack of legal instruments, which would ensure the commercialization of goods forcibly seized by the STS, the value of which at the end of 2021 amounted to 136.7 million lei. During the verified period, not a single leu was collected from the budget from the application of this instrument.
At the end of 2021, the fiscal obligations owed to the national public budget entered in the special record totaled 12.9 billion lei. Out of the total amount of 12.9 billion lei, 8.5 billion lei represent the tax obligations of about 2,900 taxpayers, who are in the insolvency procedure, the bankruptcy procedure or the simplified bankruptcy procedure.
In the context of the audit, it was found that STS did not comply with the provisions of the Fiscal Code when extinguishing some fiscal obligations from the basic record and transferring them to the special record, as well as not in all cases showing responsibility for ensuring efficient and effective management in order to recover budget claims from some insolvent taxpayers. The audit checks arrest non-compliances of a different kind admitted by the STS in a total amount of over 100 million lei.
During the audited period, the current arrears of insolvent taxpayers had an upward trend, and at the end of 2021 it amounted to 206 million lei. In the last two years, these debts have increased by about 60 million lei, and solutions and tools are needed to stop this phenomenon.
Finally, based on the findings of the external public audit, it was concluded that during the audited period the STS had a partially functional system in terms of compliance, which is to be improved in the aspects mentioned in the audit report.
