The Tax Authority has started a campaign to control trade in general.
Monday, February 3, 2014
The Superintendency of Tax Administration (SAT) is launching the Massive Fiscal Presence plan to verify tax obligations, under which 200 auditors will make visits to various production facilities. The aim is to check that these are complying with their tax obligations.
Ariel Guerra, chief of Supervisors, said: "... in January alone auditing was started at least 100 companies, it was determined that the main fault was businesses not being registered with the SAT or emiting bills without being authenticated by this body. "
"... the activity is not focused in any particular productive sector but will focus on areas such as restaurants, shops, bars, schools, grocery stores, bakeries, gas stations and professional services".
The Directorate General of Taxation has hired an external service that cross matches taxpayer data in public databases to identify suspicious patterns that might suggest misconduct.
The project called Predictive Model started to be implemented by the Ministry of Finance of Costa Rica this year, and aims to analyze the behavior of firms and individuals in order to identify suspicious or unusual patterns in the process of declaration of income and tax payments.
A declaration of unconstitutionality has been given to the section of the tax code that allowed the Treasury to demand payment of penalties and interest allegedly owed on taxes before the right to a defense can be exercised.
The slowness and inefficiency with which the Taxation department processes tax disputes, sometimes involving decades before there is a resolution, led to the outlandish idea on the part of lawmakers of putting the cart before the horse.In order to solve the problem of stubborn evasions where people take advantage of the inefficiency of the Taxation department, a decision was made to take away from companies the right to contest the results of tax audits, forcing the taxpayer to pay the amounts ordered by these audits, within in a deadline of one month, in order to be able to initiate formal questioning of those results.Now, the Supreme Court of Costa Rica has taken away that power from the Taxation department, declaring it unconstitutional.
There is urgent need to strengthen the Superintendence of Tax Administration (SAT) with audit and control instruments.
Tax evasion reached $ 2,500 million, and businessmen insist that before a tax reform is passed, increasing tax burden and affecting competitiveness in the country, it is required "to improve the fight against tax evasion and customs smuggling."
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