BG tax authorities again on hunt for bank secrets
Banks will help the tax authorities to combat financial crime. Inspectors from the National Revenue Agency will be able to enter the credit register of the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB), dariknews.bg reported.
The authorities will check if there is a discrepancy between the officially reported sums of company revenues and profits and the ones which were placed in the banks.
This is one of the measures of the Ministry of Finance to curb tax evasion and to increase compliance. However, it faces strong opposition both from business and the banks themselves.
The credit registry was created by BNB with the idea of only being used by banks and so to protect customers and bank secrets. If the circle of its users was extended, it would put the whole idea of the register under question, representatives of the vaults say.
The idea of loosening the bank secrecy was also attempted by former finance minister Simeon Djankov, who also tried to push the banks for the register, but he bumped into strong opposition. BNB and the system withstood his intentions of passing the supervision of the banks to the Financial Supervision Commission (FSC). This would have enabled access to their databases.
Another measure of the Ministry of Finance's action plan is to launch a raffle for registered receipts from 2014 with the idea of encouraging citizens to demand their receipts after shopping. After the registration of their receipts, citizens will be entered into the raffle of the NRA and will have the chance to win prizes.
The action plan also envisages paying a part of the imposed penalties as bonuses to the people who release information about tax crimes.
Source: http://www.standartnews.com
(01.08.2013)