Tax Administration shuts down more than 350 bakeries, they did not issue receipts

During ten days of August, the Tax Administration temporarily closed 356 bakeries throughout Serbia due to non-issuance of fiscal receipts or non-registration of workers, while it imposed this measure on a total of 645 facilities since the beginning of the year, N1 TV reports.

The inspection was carried out in 609 bakeries throughout Serbia, and in 67 percent of them, irregularities were found and misdemeanour charges were filed.

„According to the legal regulations, if irregularities are established during the inspection for the first time, for which a measure of temporary closure of the facility is determined, this measure lasts for 15 days. If it is established for the second time that there are irregularities, the measure of temporary ban lasts for 90 days, and if irregularities are found for the third time, a temporary ban lasts for a year,“ the Tax Administration explains.

“Why so strict? We are only human“

One of the closed bakeries is the bakery of the Grubanoski family in Zvezdara. After 40 years of working at this place, the bakery was closed for 15 days due to non-issuance of a fiscal receipt.

„A mistake, we admit. Let’s negotiate for a hundred years, instead of waging a war for one minute. Let’s fine shops, instead of closing them, because our business dropped between 50 and 70 percent“, says Zoran Grubanoski.

As he explains, without the help of the state in the form of paying the minimum wage during the epidemic, they would not have been able to survive, but the closure was an excessively rigorous measure.

„Well, I will repeat what I heard on TV. The VAT payment was low, so I suppose that the state authorities reacted on that basis, but why so rigorously. They should not have, we are only human. This is our country, this is my city, this is my village, this is my house, this shop is privately-owned,“ says Grubanoski.

Due to the non-issuance, but above all due to the failure to take fiscal receipts, the government announced that it would organize a whole set of activities in order to raise the awareness of citizens about how important that is. Until then, tax inspectors will close both food and hospitality facilities – sometimes more, sometimes less.

Izvor: N1

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