Red Tape Hot Box on the insurance business

I always thought that when it came to collecting taxes, the state was more effective than ever before. But a story from one of our readers changed my opinion on that matter ...

A few months ago the reader's company, which is in the motorcycle business, received a letter from the tax office concerning the VAT tax. The office informed them that the company's customs agency had been using the wrong VAT tax rate on the company's imported goods, which were small motorcycle parts. The finance minister's decree that raised the tax rate (from 7 percent to 22 percent) for this group of goods was issued in the last days of December 2000, and the company's import declaration was dated January 4, 2001. The customs agency had made an obvious mistake by using the old tax rate of 7 percent instead of the new one. What really caught my attention were the dates - this happened two and half years ago! But that's not all: In the past couple of months the company has received a number of letters as well as phone calls demanding an explanation. The company had to send over the entire import declaration concerning the bike parts - the source of the whole problem. Finally, after a few months of investigation, the tax office issued a resolution that included the relevant information - the supplementary charge. Well, it turned out that the company's debt to the fiskus was zł. 10. Not much, considering the fact that the mailing of a list polecony (registered letter) costs zł. 5.30. Adding up all the other letters and phone calls, as well as the clerks' work, the cost would most certainly amount to more than zł. 10.

One should ask if there are any simpler procedures for cases like this, where the cost of recovering the supplementary charge is actually higher than the charge itself. Not to mention the amount of time it took the tax office to solve this problem. If it takes two and half years to recover zł. 10, then just imagine what would happen if the amount had a couple more zeros ...