The headquarters of the inland revenue has sent out roughly EUR 384 million in VAT returns without being able to verify their validity or not.
The situation arose because the tax authority still does not have a functional system to check the VAT balances since 9 January, possibly thanks to the intervention of current head of the tax authority, Miroslav Mikulcik.
Mikulcik had problems earlier with the rental of a building for the tax office in Kosice, because it went to a company belonging to party colleagues from the SDKU sand so the latest problem will only add to suspicions.
Now it seems that Mikulcik’s intervention could also have a crony background. He rejected the original contract in January even though around EUR 4.4 million had already been paid to the company Novitech for the system in the past, with just EUR 1.3 million left to pay.
After rejecting the system, Mikulcik chose the company Bank Pro Soft, which was previously part-owned by the company Bank Pro Team, where Mikulcik himself was active. The exact figures on how much the new system will cost is being kept secret for now.
The tax authority says the company Novitech, which has basically had a monopoly on the tax office system for around 20 years, did not satisfy its obligations. The tax office wants to resolve the situation by a lawsuit because the company Novitech is withholding data from the original system as no contract was signed on data migration.
One clerk at the tax office says the system is on the verge of collapse due to its non-functionality. The system should be operational by the end of February, but the chaos on the VAT figures remains a disaster without verification. The tax authority will now be subject to a special investigation by the Supreme Audit Office and the Government Office today.
OK, now is this a Sykes farce or what?
Mikulcik gets asked to resign by Radicova because he signed a contract to rent office space from a firm owned by Ondrej Scurka, a regional official of the SDKU, and then, after resigning, he is hired by Ivan Miklos, the Finance Minister in Radicova’s government, to oversee the implementation of UNITAS. His first act is to cancel a 5.8 million Euros contract with Novitech and award a new contract to his mates at Bank Pro Soft for a new system that doesn’t work, the staff, who it would appear have some integrety, complain that they can not do their job because the systems he ordered don’t work and they want to be endemnified from any fallout as a result of the Financial Administration of the Slovak Republic being unable to verify VAT repayments, company solvency or vehicle tax, and yet, no one has been sacked, arrested, legs slapped etc.
Do you people enjoy making yourselves look stupid or what?