The Tax Workers’ Union (STI) said on Tuesday that the Tax and Customs Authority (AT) is having difficulty controlling undeclared income due to a lack of resources and mechanisms and regulations that hinder the activity, according to a statement.
The STI thus reacted to the conclusions of a management audit of fiscal control in the context of real estate leasing, carried out by the General Inspection of Finance (IGF) in 2023, which concluded that AT does not have a comprehensive plan to control illegal leasing, which integrates complaints and information on water and energy contracts that supplier companies are obliged to send to it.
According to the STI, AT’s “difficulty” in controlling undeclared income is “easy” to understand. “This is partly justified by the lack of human and material resources, but not only that. The reality is that instead of helping tax and customs inspectors and managers to do their job, AT has created mechanisms and regulations that harm and hinder this work,” he lamented.
For Gonçalo Rodrigues, president of the STI, this performance audit carried out by the IGF “highlights, once again, a reality that the union structure has been warning about, namely, that this is one of the many work tests that the AT should do and does not do,” according to the same note.
According to the union, “the amounts not declared in the lease contract add to the amounts of fraud and tax evasion and are not simply residual. It would be important for them to be inspected and charged.”
For the STI, AT, “which lacks human and material resources, still disperses them in routine and robotic tasks instead of using them to combat fraud, tax evasion and economic and financial crimes.”
According to current legislation, Water, energy and telecommunications supply companies must notify AT of the signed contracts before 15 April, 15 July, 15 October and 15 January. with their respective clients, as well as the changes that occurred in the previous quarter.
This communication is made through the so-called IMI Model 2, with the IGF highlighting the absence of a plan by AT that integrates the information contained in this Model 2 with the reports of undeclared leases.
This information “has not been used consistently for control purposes, despite its usefulness in analysing the risk of tax evasion”, the audit concludes, and the IGF states that this is demonstrated by the results obtained in samples created from this information, and in which 60% of the lessee contractors did not have a registered/valid lease contract and 25% of the owner contractors, with contracts for the supply of several dwellings, had no declared activity.
The IGF also says that AT is not aware of the universe of complaints received and does not have an application that simplifies the communication process and “guarantees its efficient, dematerialized and centralized management.”
Source: Observadora
