Government cracks down on online tax evasion

The Ministry has pulled together a special task force that has undergone training in France and will be equipped with state-of-the-art software. "The change will be huge. So far, only limited pilot checks were carried out by a handful of tax offices. Now, however, all offices throughout the country will be actively involved and the Ministry will coordinate the effort," says Tomasz Korzecki, head of the IT division at the Ministry's tax inspection department. "This, however, will require extra learning for some inspectors, many of whom have little knowledge of how the internet works." Poland's e-commerce market, which totaled just under zl.5 billion last year, is growing at a staggering pace and is expected to reach zl.16 billion or 4% of all retails sales by 2010, 1.5% more than today. (Puls Biznesu, p. 1, 16-18) R.M.