Tax board has frozen over 55,000 bank accounts in 2010
11.03.2010, 09:48Tax board has become notably more active in freezing bank accounts of tax debtors. While last year the board froze in average 10,000 bank accounts a month, it has now frozen 55,000 accounts in two months of 2010, writes Äripäev.
Businessman Jaanus Lauri who is board member of car dealer Revo Auto that is being liquidated says that tax board froze the company's bank accounts several time. "The problem is to free the account from the restrictions after you have paid the tax arrear. You have to be very active and call them, otherwise nothing happens. They seem to have plenty of time from releasing the bank account from restrictions," said Lauri.
Valter Teppan, CEO and owner of Võidusõidutehnika, says that the tax board terminated the tax arrear payment schedule that it had agreed with the company and ordered the company to pay the full amount in ten days. "They did not wait for 30 days that are given to dispute such claims and froze 480,000 kroons on our bank account although the debt was 116,000 kroons," he said.
Lawyer Reet Rattur says that more and more businessman are asking legal aid in such cases. "This is a new trend in the tax board. There was a notable change at the end of last year," said Rattur, adding that tax board is keen to freeze bank accounts even for smaller tax debts.
Kerly Lillemets, head of tax arrear collection department of Tax Board, said in response that the agency had not changed its principle of handling and collecting tax arrear. "From the start of this year we switched to entirely new electronic debt administration system that allows automatically to make standard operations such as mass notification, freezing accouts, etc. that used to be manual work," she said.
She emphasised that the system does not automatically issue ordesr for seizing bank accounts. "But now we can issue 100 administrative orders in the same time that we used to issue only one order," she said.
Total tax debt was 6.24 billion kroons in early March. This is less than in February since taxpayers that owe tax can offset their debt with tax reclaims.