Altogether 231.5 million euros flew into the Estonian state budget as a result of tax recovery proceedings during 2012, whereas of current tax claims more than 90 percent were paid, tax officials said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Estonia takes in EUR 231.5 mln unpaid taxes with recovery proceedings
5th February 2013, 18:32
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Tax recovery proceedings brought 237.9 million euros into the state budget in 2011 and 167.2 million euros in 2010, deputy director of the Tax and Customs Board Egon Veermae said.
The tax liabilities declared to the Tax and Customs Board for 2012 have been paid to the extent of 99.3 percent. Veermae said that a factor contributing to this very good result was the automated process of tax debt recovery in use since 2010. The size of tax arrears for the current year has declined by 3.9 million euros compared with 2011.
The tax authority expects payment discipline to improve further starting from this year, as a system of advance and ex-post notification about monetary and non-monetary liabilities will be taken into use.
There are still about 150 companies systematically not paying taxes that constitute a permanent headache for the Tax and Customs Board. As regards these companies the tax authority intends to resort more often than so far to the option of filing a bankruptcy petition, said Veermae.
In the course of his year the tax authority expects to reduce the sum total of tax arrears to under 300 million euros. During 2012 total tax arrears contracted by 28.7 million euros to 343.1 million euros.
At the beginning of January 52,589 persons in Estonia had outstanding tax liabilities in the amount of 343.1 million euros. Compared with the beginning of December the sum total declined by 2.3 percent or almost eight million euros. The total debt of the one hundred legal entities that had the biggest debt was 87.3 million euros, making up approximately a quarter of the total amount.