Tax and customs authorities of the Visegrad Four may boost fiscal revenues and protect law-abiding enterprises through new measures against VAT fraud, such as threshold prices for Far Eastern products and risk profiling, Deputy Economy Minister and Minister of State for Taxation András Tállai told representatives of the respective authorities of six countries from the region.

The fact that customs authorities of the Visegrad Four have been applying uniform threshold prices since 1 January 2016 is the result of 25 years of cooperation within the V4. This practically means that customs officials apply the same minimum prices in determining the customs value of textile and footwear products from the Far East and importers cannot avoid paying a reasonable amount of duty on their goods.

Another successful field of cooperation was the control of basis oils trade. Initiated by the Hungarian Tax and Customs Administration (NAV), a working group was established in 2011 to fight illegal basis oil trade practises, András Tállai pointed out, and now it includes representatives of 16 countries and it has been supported by the EUROPOL.  The group monitors the route of transports, from the production site down to tractors. In this way, the number of people gaining unlawful profits from basis oils, which are exempted of excise taxes, is shrinking.

This year’s latest measure, the so-called integrated risk management system, closes a legal loophole exploited by international networks of tax fraudsters. As all four member states have introduced their risk analysis schemes in detail, the tax and customs offices of these countries know very well what kind of data they can obtain from each other when they are examining a suspected tax-dodging company.

The Electronic Trade and Transport Control System (EKÁER) was one of the schemes presented at the event.

(Ministry for National Economy)