The poorly thought out seizure of goods identified by ‘goods in transit’ documents continues to amuse and baffle in equal measure as a lunch delivery from a restaurant to a business customer has been targeted by the taxman.
A corporate lunch of 'breaded prawns with orange sauce, green salad, cod gratin with spinach and cheesecake with red fruit coulis, plus complimentary bread rolls' has been listed by the taxman, along with the waiter as there was a ‘delivery charge within the Lisbon area.’
The internal Tax Authority rules swiftly were changed after food destined for poor families was seized from a charity in Oporto in April, but only if the recipient is ‘an individual or a social welfare institution.’
This latest seizure was for food delivered for an in-house business lunch so was not covered by the exemption added in haste by Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs, Paulo Núncio who was keen to avoid any further embarrassing events that made his tax collection system look mean, unthinking and on occasion, foolish.
What makes this latest action by the Tax Authority all the more concerning is that the €192.82 business lunch in question was delivered on February 25th 2015, some four months before the seizure notice was sent out.
In the notification, the Tax and Customs Authority said that the company that enjoyed the meal should “consider the goods identified in the transport document as pledged in favour of the tax office to pay the enforceable debt under the tax foreclosure process."
The recipient of the business lunch was named as trustee of the food that had been consumed four months earlier, as well as trustee of the employee and of the intangible delivery service.
The Tax Authority gave the business five working days to inform it about any "possible absence, total or partial, of the property seized."
After the April 2015 seizure of food destined for the poor of Oporto, the government changed its seizure criteria but the system seems to be fully automated so we can expect more of the headline grabbing follies.
The Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs said that as a result of the measures he has taken, these cases "are becoming less common or virtually non-existent and when they are detected, instructions are issued for them to be corrected."
Núncio also said that the electronic Guia de Transporte system, had been very effective in the prevention and detection of fraud and tax evasion in transactions between companies and was "one of the main reasons for the good performance of VAT revenue this year, a 9.2% growth in April year on year."
