New tax fraud busting plan

The Balearic Finance Minister, Joan Mesquida, yesterday outlined exactly how his department is to step up its crackdown on fiscal fraud in the Balearics and strengthen their powers so that property, boats, cars and financial shares can be seized in the event of no liquid assets being available. Mesquida explained yesterday that being able to embargo someone's bank account is a relatively easy operation, but the Minister said that there are times when the culprit has made sure that he has no liquid assets and then the process breaks down and becomes increasingly complicated. Mesquida said that in order to resolve the situation the Balearic government is working on modifying the norms so that the department will have greater powers of embargo. The head of inspections said yesterday that usually, somebody who has fiscal debts, does not have any liquid assets, but more often than not, the subject does have a number of assets which can be embargoed. For example, the Minister said that cars, houses, land, boats and company shares are all suitable alternatives if there are no liquid assets, but at the moment, they are extremely difficult to embargo. The change in the norms and strengthening of powers is just a part of the Finance Ministry's new war on fraud. The Ministry also intends to simultaneously improve its measures of raising funds. For example, once items have been embargoed, a private company will be brought in to auction off the goods. The main aim of this latest drive is to encourage more people to pay their taxes, but a recent study has discovered that many members of the public are not paying their taxes because they simply do not know what they are supposed to do. As a result, the Ministry is going to increase the amount of information available in order to reduce such problems.