STI’s patience with fraudulent car dealers has come to an end: it has begun to punish and even check prices

In Kaunas, the State Tax Inspectorate (STI) identified a car sale advertisement, which indicated a fictitious SDK. Although there are also errors, but this case caused suspicion – it was decided to check.

Tax inspectors and police officers imitated interested car buyers.

The seller not only showed the vehicle, but also offered to complete the transaction by signing non-Lithuanian purchase and sale documents, a Dutch “kaufer” or a purchase and sale agreement. What’s more, it was completed by a woman working in the auto market and the car dealer signed the “kaufer” instead of a foreign national.

Dainava Police Station officials expressed suspicions of falsification of documents to a resident of Kaunas City, and control actions by the Kaunas County ITS continue.

In any case, these situations are decreasing, says Rolandas Puncevičius, Senior Advisor in the ITS Control Department.

The tolerance period ended on September 1, when so-called “peripups” could still get away with it without specifying the SDK. As of May 1, the car can only be sold with a unique SDK code that links the car to its owner.

Check on the roads, in the markets, look at the advertisements: already 38 infractions

Although until September 1, car dealers were only threatened with a warning for violations, the STI continued to conduct inspections. Every second or third inspected car was not available to the SDK.

“During the tolerance period, the STI together with other institutions inspected 1.5 thousand. on the roads and during inspections 427 cases were found where the vehicle did not have a mandatory SDK. Also in car sales parking lots, marketplaces in almost 4 months. 4.5 thousand were inspected during the period. means of transport. During these visits, 2 thousand. cases where sellers did not publicly advertise or did not have an SDK ”, R. Puncevičius covers the period before September 1.

The announcements in the electronic space were also actively reviewed. The STI scans ads on portals and social media every week. For September, up to 7.7 thousand. people received calls from the STI, both specialists and automatic notifiers of the obligation to indicate the SDK.

What has changed since September 1?

“Currently we continue with inspections on roads, markets and other points of sale, and scan advertising portals. In total, in September, together with other control authorities, we inspected almost a thousand. Road vehicles and parking lots: 19% of vehicles inspected by hauliers did not have an SDK, 12% of the vehicles inspected in a car park did not have an SDK. To date, 38 administrative misconduct protocols have been drawn up, “says R. Puncevičius.

It ensures that at the end of the tolerance period, priority will be given to those residents who, before September 1. have been warned of violations of the SDK rules.

“In the first stage, we selected people who had already warned us several times about the ads they placed without the SDK, but have not yet mentioned the SDK of the car for sale in the ads. These people will be subject to administrative responsibility for violations of the rules ”, says a representative of the STI.

False SDK: 5 percent. advertisements

Buyers should also beware of the fact that some sellers are pointing to a fake SDK.

“There are invalid / incorrect SDK ads when scanning online ads. September. Data after 1.5 thousand scan. Found 5 percent of online car sales ads. Ads with invalid SDK in August These cases represented 11% ”, calculates R. Puncevičius.

It ensures that a large proportion of cases occur due to potentially ingrained human error.

However, there are also abusive sellers seeking to escape the attention of regulatory authorities. We note that the correctness of the SDK is checked on a case-by-case basis, so a dummy SDK certainly won’t help to bypass the check, ”says R. Puncevičius.

It admits that, although the number of transactions recorded in “buffer” has decreased, there are still cases where, for example, Residents who do not carry out individual activities, when declaring a car, present documents issued abroad.

“In these cases, to assess the reality of the transactions that the car was bought abroad from a foreign citizen, the STI will pay additional attention,” promises R. Puncevičius.

Control officers can apply administrative liability if they find that a vehicle has not been declared in accordance with the procedure established by law. The fine will be imposed by the authority that determined the infraction.

The owner (manager) of the vehicle faces a fine of 150 to 300 euros for failure to comply with the requirements set out in the Road Safety Law of the Republic of Lithuania. In case of repeated infringement: from 440 to 600 euros. At that time, falsifying documents was already a crime.

The shadow diminishes

The STI is convinced that the recently introduced SDK procedure has a positive effect in reducing the shadow in the field of vehicle trade.

“This is evidenced by the increase in the number of taxpayers who trade vehicles: compared to 2021. October with the same period in 2020. 411 more neighbors and 176 more companies carry out these activities,” calculates the STI representative.

The new system also helped screen 22 residents who may be involved in unregistered car sales.

“During the follow-up actions, 109 thousand. Unreported income of EUR and an additional 4.2 thousand. taxes in euros. 6 people registered individual car trading activities “, R. Puncevičius reviews the results for just over a month.

STI has been considering the used car trade sector as one of its priority areas for several years. 2018-2021 I pusm. Control activities in this sector have identified around 5.8 million additional taxes to be paid.

It will check if the sale prices are real – the SDK allows you to see more

Launched on May 1, the SDK system provides more opportunities for institutions: it is possible to identify from the beginning the people who offer to sell cars, as well as the specific cars for sale (by make, body number) and the price of sale offered. .

It will soon be possible to compare this data with data available from other sources (eg data on compulsory technical inspections of vehicles, market prices of vehicles sold on the Lithuanian market specified in the Emprekis manual, advertising prices), explains the STI.

“For this, the STI plans to implement a new data analysis system, which will allow to assess the reality of the sale price of the cars specified in the contracts, and the people who have entered into a car sales contract and have indicated a price potentially fictitious. you will have to verify it. If the price specified in the contract does not correspond to the market value of the car, the STI may ask the seller to submit additional documents proving the significantly lower price indicated, ”says R. Puncevičius.

During tax inspections, such transactions, where a fictitious price is quoted, will result in additional charges and a penalty as defined by law.