The STI blacklist has doubled: some companies do not even suspect that it is on it

The complete list, called “Black”, is published on the STI website. On February 18, there were 362 companies on it. For comparison, at the end of October 2020, that is, before the announcement of the second quarantine in Lithuania, there were 160 legal entities.

According to Danutė Laurinavičienė, representative of the Tax Obligations Department of the State Tax Inspectorate, 76 legal entities were included in the list due to tax offenses and 14 due to other offenses. The STI involved a total of 90 people.

At that time, another 272 legal entities were included in accordance with the decisions of other institutions. These are the State Labor Inspectorate (255 JA), the Financial Crimes Investigation Service (9), the Registry Center (3), the Vilnius City Municipal Administration (2), the Security Administration of the Lithuanian Transport (1), Police (1) and Territorial Customs (1).

D. Laurinavičienė pointed out that the following violations are the most common: illegal work and responsibility for it (250), violations of the procedure for submitting reports, declarations or other documents and data necessary for the performance of tax administrator functions (75) , illegal work (14), breach of accounting regulations (7), obstruction of the exercise of the rights or duties assigned to officials authorized by law, breach of legal requirements or instructions and decisions of collegiate institutions or public officials (4 ).

Does not receive support

The STI representative further explained that one of the criteria to receive a single non-refundable subsidy established by the Ministry of Economy and Innovation and agreed with the European Commission is that the company must meet the minimum criteria of a reliable taxpayer.

“Likewise, when compiling the new ITS list of companies affected by the pandemic due to the application of tax aid measures until April 30 and 2 months later, companies that do not meet the minimum criteria of a reliable taxpayer were not included.

Furthermore, taxpayers who have not met the criteria of a trustworthy taxpayer cannot participate in public procurement and become beneficiaries, and those who have that status, this status is revoked ”, recalled D. Laurinavičienė.

He added that there are four criteria based on which taxpayers are included in that list.

“ A taxpayer will be included in the list of people who do not meet the criteria of the minimum reliable taxpayer when they do not meet the criteria established in article 40-1 (1) (1) to (4) of the Tax Administration Law, I mean, yes:

1. In the 3 years prior to the assessment, a penalty was imposed for not accounting for income, unrecorded payroll, unjustified deduction of value added tax, and increased allowable deductions for accounting documents that were not recorded in the accounts or that were not executed or otherwise, for the private needs of the head of the legal person or other responsible persons or the self-employed with the funds of the legal person or funds related to the individual activity, for the misuse of the support and for the At least at least one of these violations was calculated more than 15 thousand. taxes in euros and;

2. That the legal or natural person that is dedicated to an individual activity has been sanctioned for illegal work during the last 3 years prior to the date of its valuation and;

3. The legal person and / or its manager or a person dedicated to individual activities have been convicted of fraud, illegal enrichment, economic and commercial crimes, financial system crimes and;

4. During the year prior to the evaluation, 1.5 thousand. A fine of 1 million euros or more has been imposed for certain administrative offenses and / or a fine for a repeat offense, and this decision has come into force, ”he said.

Only offenses committed as of January 1, 2019 are evaluated.

You think there may be a mistake

Delfi randomly selected and contacted some of the companies on the list. Some of them did not respond to the query, but others did.

For example, Renatas Makelis, the director of the Lithuanian Greenhouse Association, said that she only found out she was on the list after receiving a letter from Delfi.

“After reviewing the information, we found that our association was in fact on the list supervised by the STI, but after reviewing the criteria of the Tax Administration Law, we see that we did not comply with any of them.

We were not notified prior to listing or even the potential threat of listing, so we believe a mistake may have been made. This assumption is also confirmed by the fact that the report itself establishes that inaccuracies can be published in the publication of these data, ”he said.

Romanas Motiekaitis, director of the company “Ideali švara”, said that he was late in paying taxes.

Rimgaudas Kiela, the head of the Rimos knygynas company, explained similarly.

“Perhaps because in 2020 we presented invoices twice to the Intelligent Tax Administration System (i.MAS) on time. The first time there was a warning and the second time we received a fine.

The first time we were late during the quarantine from March to April because we did not work and we evaporated (we were 1 day late), and the second time there was a misunderstanding when I clicked the “Submit” button. and I was 3 days late. I received a fine of 295 euros that I paid immediately. Maybe that’s why we are not trustworthy, “he said.

Paulius Bodindorf, director of the Norviliškių pilis company, said he was unable to work for five months due to the pandemic.

Therefore, we no longer have the funds to pay the accounting firm. For this reason, we did not present reports for two months in a row, we received a fine from the SME and we were included in this list ”, he explained.

Criticized a long time ago

The STI list has been criticized by the president of the Lithuanian Business Confederation, Andrius Romanovskis, for some time.

“It just came to our attention then. Our legislation does not foresee such things as unreliable taxpayers. There are minimum requirements for a reliable taxpayer. There is no talk of unreliable lists,” he said.

Another aspect that makes it difficult for the interlocutor is that the four criteria mentioned above are very unequal.

“They are very different. For example, some relate to prosecution, others to minor violations of the Employment Law. It turns out that if at least one of the four matches, it automatically becomes unreliable.

I understand if a manager is punished for economic crimes, abuse, etc. This is a serious offense. However, another criterion is 1.5 thousand. a fine of EUR. This is inappropriate, because you say that the one who is a thief and the one who has made some administrative error is equally bad, ”A. Romanovskis told Delfi.

The president of the confederation pointed out that the marked increase in the number of companies on the list during the second quarantine is probably related to the stressful situation in the employment relationship.

“In a crisis situation, there are more violations of the Employment Law. Now everyone is stressed out and then further removed from the support list.

The increase is related to the Employment Law, there is downtime, people are working on it, it is not working, they are laying off, accepting and so on. There is more to do with institutions. It is natural for companies to make mistakes, “said A. Romanovskis.