Around 2000 companies have not paid salaries for more than a year

Finance Minister Slavko Linić announced yesterday that the list of companies that do not pay salaries to their employees, currently around 14,000, will likely be published in the fall, after the proposed amendments to the Income Tax Act are accepted by the Parliament.

We are trying to resolve this issue through the income tax law and we will indeed start publishing the companies that do not pay salaries to their employees,” Linić said in a media statement at the Ministry of Finance.

Noting that the number of these companies varies, Linić stated that there have been around 14,000 in recent months, of which about 2,000 companies have not paid salaries for more than a year, or more than 6 months, while around 12,000 occasionally do not pay salaries.

The exact number of employees in these companies is difficult to calculate, as the list changes, but in the “chronic” companies that have not paid workers for a long time, there are about 12,000 employees, and occasionally up to 20,000, Linić said. When asked how many of them are state-owned companies or companies in partial state ownership, he replied that they have not researched that data, but that there are state companies among them.

When asked whether this means that the existing criminal law, which should punish such employers, is not functioning, the finance minister said that this is not the job of his ministry. Someone else is responsible for initiating criminal proceedings, and the job of the Ministry of Finance is neither criminal proceedings nor the implementation of measures in that area. “Our job is to inform citizens which companies these are and who the leaders of those companies are, because we believe that every leader who cannot pay salaries knows what the Bankruptcy Act prescribes for him. He cannot remain a leader without initiating proceedings or pre-bankruptcy settlements or opening bankruptcy and simply ending the agony,” emphasized Linić.

The proposed amendments to the Income Tax Act foresee that employers who do not pay salaries for more than three months will be included on that list, and when asked why they are not included as soon as they do not pay one salary, Linić said that this is also possible and that the Parliament will make the final decision.

Let the discussion in the Parliament show what is primarily in the interest of the people who make the laws. Our proposal is three months, but we always encounter enormous resistance. When we said we would publish a list of tax debtors, everyone considered it tax pressure, but in fact, it is not any tax pressure; it is a list of those who, despite the crisis, have not been responsible in meeting their obligations. In terms of salaries, I believe that responsibility is far greater,” emphasized Linić, announcing that the list will likely be published in the fall, that is, when the proposed amendments are voted on by the parliamentary representatives.