The one year course for 886 trainee tax inspectors is stretching into its third - but not becasue the students are dim.
The Ministry of Finance refuses to announced when this torment will end despite the trainees having completed all the necessary tests to become tax inspectors. As they remain as lowly paid trainees for no good reason, it can be assumed that the reason is cost.
The trainees are still on a trainee’s salary, despite carrying out the work of fully qualified tax inspectors, and the ministry is saving a fortune.
In January 2015, 886 trainee tax inspectors started a "trial period" at the Treasury.
By law, this internship has a maximum duration of one year. But according to Público this Monday, these same trainees are now starting their third year with no end in sight.
If everything had been done within the legal parameters, the trainees by now would be drawing the salary appropriate to their current work as fully qualified tax inspectors.
This delay is viewed as unaccaptable and complaints have been made to the Ombudsman.
For the president of the Association of Tax and Customs Inspection Professionals (APIT), Nuno Barroso, the process has been dragged out due to the "inertia of those in charge" at the Treasury.
The Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs, Fernando Rocha Andrade, argues that the one-year period refers only to the time "when the worker is in the learning phase, subject to evaluation of both his knowledge and performance in the first two tests," and that only after this ill-defined period is the final test held - but this is high quality waffle and certainly not the way the union boss interprets the law.
"What the law says is one year; it's not two, not two and a half, not three years," said Nuno Barroso , adding that the 886 trainees have passed all the written tests needed for them to become tax inspectors but the Tax Office refuses to upgrade them.
