STI doubts that all the companies that received support during the pandemic were worth it: they gave loans themselves, paid dividends | Deal

The Inspection selected 236 companies with 83.5 million employees for individual evaluation. back taxes.

The STI of these companies requests to provide documents that prove that the tax aid measures applied to them are necessary to guarantee the liquidity and continuity of the company’s business.

According to the deputy director of the STI Artūras Klerauskas, the companies for which there is contradictory information have been selected for such an evaluation.

According to him, some companies faced only a slight change in sales or even an increase in sales. Some of them have been recorded to continue repaying loans even during a pandemic, paying dividends to shareholders, racking up millions in accounts, and even lending themselves.

For example, 445 companies in Lithuania have disbursed almost 18 million. dividends, although it has tax arrears of more than 30 million euros. euros.

Another example is the companies that have accumulated about 220 million. 100 million euros in arrears. euros.

The official also said that not all taxpayers who received state aid were able to explain the extent to which their business was affected by the pandemic and the quarantine. According to him, applications sometimes even provided inaccurate data.

According to the STI specialist, a closer examination of some cases revealed that the business or part of it was transferred to other legal entities with all employees during the pandemic and therefore to sales revenue.

At times, it became clear that the activities claimed by the company, which were quarantined by the Government, were not actually carried out.

A. Klerauskas said that it used to be that when companies were asked to substantiate their statements, they simply received no response.

According to him, such a situation, when the support is distributed to companies that are in fact in good compliance, would be avoided if the STI inspected the company before including it in the list of victims.

However, the STI deputy chief said this was unrealistic, as the list of victims includes 72,000. Business.

“If we had examined each application, … the aid measures would not have reached the companies to date,” said A. Klerauskas.

“It is about the risk management rules when there is a certain perspective of the applications that are analyzed in detail. This is a general principle of public administration ”, he added.

Eligibility criteria are stricter

With the continuation of the coronavirus pandemic, the STI will apply the same business assistance in 2021 as it did last year: it will allow tax deferrals, will not carry out recovery, and will not charge interest on arrears.

However, getting on the beneficiary list this year will be more difficult.

The STI will carry out additional inspections of companies to ensure that they carry out activities restricted by government decisions on quarantine conditions.

It will also be assessed whether the company’s sales have been declining since the second quarantine in the fall of 2020.

Only if these two conditions are met, companies will be evaluated based on five other criteria: total liquidity, critical liquidity, total solvency, indebtedness and maneuverability.

If three of these criteria are good or satisfactory in the company, it will not be included in the list of beneficiaries.

Currently, the tax deferral applies to more than 26,000. Lithuanian population and almost 29 thousand. Business. These payers have reserved more than $ 750 million. taxes in euros.