Tax Administration: 6,936 Employers Do Not Pay Wages to Their Employees

A total of 6,936 employers in Croatia do not pay wages, employing 22,792 workers, according to the latest updated data from the Tax Administration regarding wage non-payers for the calculation period from January to July of this year.

The statistical overview of taxpayers, employers who according to available data do not pay wages, based on the list published on September 15, shows that 5,757 legal entities with 19,475 employees and 1,179 individuals with 3,317 workers do not pay wages.

This data was formed based on submitted JOPPD forms in which employers reported wage non-payment and subsequent payment of overdue wages for the calculation period from January to July 2015 (criteria of three consecutive months) and for the calculation period from February to July (criteria of three months within a six-month period), explains the Tax Administration, which published the latest list today on its website.

They note that the list does not contain data on taxpayers who did not submit the JOPPD form, nor on those who reported wage non-payment but not for three consecutive months or three months within the last six months for 2015.

Also, the list does not include employers who reported wage payments in the current year, as shown on the JOPPD form, but did not pay wages for periods before January 1, 2014, due to the fact that for periods before the introduction of the JOPPD form, the Tax Administration does not have analytical data on wage payments but only data on public obligations based on wages. The list does not contain data on taxpayers who did not pay wages but reported wage payments and incurred public obligations as if they had paid wages.

The Tax Administration also calls on all workers who do not receive wages or have not received overdue wages, and whose employer is not on the published list, to report this to the toll-free phone number 0800 49 49. Based on the report, additional supervision and data analysis will be conducted, and a special list of such employers will be formed.

Similarly, the Tax Administration invites workers to report any other facts they believe are not correctly stated.

The publication of the list of employers who do not pay wages to their employees is enabled by the Income Tax Act. This law stipulates that the Tax Administration, based on collected data on the JOPPD form, can publish on its website a list of taxpayers/employers who do not pay wages to their employees, i.e., who on the submitted forms reported only the calculation of contributions without wage payment for three consecutive months or three months within a six-month period.

The Tax Administration notes that the lists of taxpayers who according to available data do not pay wages, which are published on their website, are not comparable because with each new publication of the list, the number of periods for which data is reported increases.

The first list of wage non-payers was published by the Tax Administration in mid-July of last year, and it then included 7,038 employers.

The list published in mid-August, which related to the calculation period from January to June of this year, included a total of 6,839 employers with 22,009 employees.