They catch tax defaulters
In order to control whether sellers pay their taxes properly, as well as to reduce the shadow economy, VMI has recently been paying special attention to online sellers.
As a portal lrytas.lt said Rolandas Puncevičius, senior advisor of the VMI Control Department, the same rules apply to residents conducting their activities in the electronic space as to other entrepreneurs.
“From a tax point of view, there is no difference in which field of business unregistered activities are carried out, income is not accounted for, taxes are not paid, therefore liability for violations in electronic commerce is dealt with in a general manner. Control actions and control procedures remain traditional: operative inspection, tax investigation or inspection”, emphasized R. Puncevičius.
By 2022, VMI has identified 4.7 million EUR of additional taxes to be paid. Almost 600 thousand persons reselling goods on social networks will have to pay EUR. 203 cases of violations were identified.
The anti-record holder of 2022 is a woman who sold clothes during live broadcasts on Facebook. She did not pay 96 thousand. euro taxes.
“VMI continues to plan to pay attention to persons active in social networks. It is observed that most of the trading activities are carried out on Facebook, so currently the VMI is focused on this platform, regardless of whether trading is done on the Facebook marketplace or during sales during live broadcasts,” R. Puncevičius assured.
Inspections may be carried out by persons whose declared income or other activity indicators will cause suspicion of discrepancies between publicly available information and declared activity and income.
“In order to identify possible cases of abuse, VMI constantly evaluates available data declared by taxpayers, data received from tax administrators of other European Union (EU) countries, Lithuanian and foreign financial institutions, and information published in the public space and on the Internet.
VMI monitors economic activity on the Internet and social networks, receives website registration data, and responds to received reports of tax violations. When analyzing risky taxpayers and controlling them on social networks, attention is paid to the number of followers, likes, comments, etc.,” said the senior advisor of the VMI Control Department.
In the course of control actions, not only cases of undeclared income are identified, but also cases where taxpayers wrongly attribute the acquisition of real estate, personal items or services to the costs of their activities. In this way, you “forget” to declare and pay value added, personal income and profit taxes.
If violations are detected during the control, an Administrative Violation Protocol is drawn up for the violators. For example, if a person is found to be conducting an unregistered individual activity, he may be fined between 780 and 1100 euros.
Actively sells fakes
Facebook dealers are constantly checked by the police’s virtual patrol. As a portal lrytas.lt explained representatives of the Police Department’s Communication Department, officers receive a number of reports regarding advertisements for sale of clothes, accessories, and footwear marked with famous brands. Monitoring is carried out by the officers themselves.
“Various sales groups, pages, individual profiles, live broadcasts and marketplace are tracked,” they assured.
The police officers did not agree to reveal to the portal how a specific inspection is going, but they explained that only publicly available information and tools are used for it.
“Such inspections take place constantly. Trends – This type of clothing is still actively marketed on Facebook. The offenders usually explain that they did not know that such clothes cannot be sold.
If it is determined that clothes with possible foreign brands are presented, the information is collected and transferred to the police authorities for further investigation and additional verification of the information,” they commented.
The Criminal Code stipulates that a person who, without permission, marked a large amount of goods with a foreign trademark or offered them for sale or used a foreign service mark and caused significant damage as a result, shall be punished by a fine, restriction of liberty or deprivation of liberty for up to two years. If a small amount is marked, there is a risk of community service, a fine or restriction of liberty.
