If you have money that you have not declared to the authorities, whether it was obtained through tax evasion, smuggling or other criminal activities, you will be able to declare it to the tax authorities for a minimum tax of 5%, and no one will inspect you to see where the money came from or ask you any questions.
This is the essence of the so-called “fiscal peace”, a draft law of the “Rama” government that, under the traditional ideas of writing off uncollectible tax liabilities, creates a wide channel through which any owner of a registered company will be able to declare assets that it is currently supposed to hold off the balance sheet, without having to account for the origin of these assets. The only obligation is the payment of a tax of 15% if the re-declared profit is 18% higher than that declared in the last three years, and 5% for profits higher than that.
The initial idea for a fiscal amnesty was born in 2020 by the Rama government. After protests from the European Union, plans to pass it quietly in parliament failed. The bill went through a “review process,” but failed again in 2022 after protests from Brussels.
The new bill, which was pre-approved in parliament before being reviewed article by article recently, is essentially the same thing except for the title. This time, the bill is not called “fiscal amnesty” but is disguised under the moniker “fiscal peace.”
What “peace” and “amnesty” have in common is the tax measure, 5% was foreseen to be paid by individuals and businesses that would benefit from the fiscal amnesty process and 5% is still required today by “peace”. As in the case of amnesty, the beneficiaries of “peace” will have one year to declare undeclared money or other physical assets.
For example, a business that has declared, say, 10 thousand euros in net profits for the last three years will have the opportunity to declare 100 thousand or 200 thousand or practically as much undeclared profits as it wants, for which it will pay a 5% fee.
As in the case of amnesty, the essence of the new bill will be that the tax authorities, upon receiving the request for an agreement, lose the right to control while the process remains strictly confidential. There is no clause to verify whether the additional money self-declared came from ordinary tax evasion, or was obtained from drug trafficking, corruption or other illegal activities.
Unlike the amnesty bill, in this case, Politically Exposed Persons, known in technical language as "PEPs", are non-excluded beneficiaries. /BIRN/
