Tax police should start work in 2013, Bulgarian Finance Minister says
Reviving an idea dating back a decade, Bulgaria’s Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov has said that he wants a bill setting up a tax police tabled in Parliament by June and the new unit to start operating at the beginning of 2013.
He said he wanted that the National Revenue Agency to be ready with a formal proposal about the tax police by April 27.
Dyankov said that it had long been known that there was a serious problem with evasion of value-added tax and while there had been "some positive results" he wanted much more serious work.
Without a tax police, this would be difficult, Dyankov said. Bulgaria was alone in Europe in lacking a tax police, he said.
Dyankov said that he expected that setting up a tax police would have a positive effect similar to the reforms at the Customs Agency.
The idea of the tax police has been meandering around the corridors of the Finance Ministry for a decade without getting anywhere.
It was mooted by Milen Velchev, finance minister in the Simeon Saxe-Coburg administration that was in office from 2001 to 2005, and was raised again in the 2005/09 socialist-led government by then-deputy finance minister Georgi Kadiev.
If the tax police idea is implemented, it would be the latest among Bulgaria’s special police forces, depending on how fast Agriculture Minister Miroslav Naidenov can implement the proposal agreed on at a meeting of senior government officials to create an "animal police" to deal with stray dogs.
Sofia municipality has its own municipal police, while news website Mediapool noted that nothing had come of the idea of an "eco police" to deal with people who throw cigarette butts on the pavement.
Text: Sofiaecho.com
Photo: Sofiaecho.com