HIBAPRESS – A. M.
In a sensational development, a large-scale tax inspection campaign led by the regional inspection services of the Regional Directorate of Taxes in Fez revealed serious violations in the files of nine companies operating in the Taza region, four of which were found to be involved in networks for promoting and using forged invoices.
According to informed sources, the tax authorities rejected these companies' requests related to the deduction of expenses that were considered "suspicious" within their declared general costs, after the audit teams detected strong indications of manipulation in the tax declarations. Inspectors noticed the repeated use of vague phrases such as "various services" and "service expenses," without any precise description or legal justifications for these expenses, in addition to the lack of connection between a large part of them and the actual activity of the companies concerned. Investigations revealed that some of these expenses did not actually exist on the ground, as the companies resorted to submitting "mission letters" and fictitious invoices to mislead the inspection services and reduce the tax amounts due on them in illegal ways. In an attempt to avoid legal prosecution, two of the nine companies tried to benefit from the "right to error" stipulated in Article 221 bis of the General Tax Code, by submitting corrective declarations and paying the dues automatically to avoid the most severe penalties. However, the tax audit deepened the suspicion after it was revealed that four companies out of the nine had been previously caught months ago involved in the production of forged invoices, where their accounting locations were identified within accounting offices in both Taza (3 companies) and Akhennoul (one). These "phantom" companies issued a total of 1541 forged invoices with large amounts, including one company whose invoices exceeded 321 million centimes in just one year, while most of them resorted to including small amounts in the invoices to avoid raising suspicions. It turned out that some of these companies were originally subject to judicial liquidation procedures or were not active at all, which reinforces the hypothesis of exploiting them as fronts for laundering commercial transactions through the "forged invoices market" that the tax administration had previously warned against. The Regional Director of Taxes in Taza had revealed during a communication meeting last year with economic actors the "shocking" size of this phenomenon, pointing out the existence of inactive companies that practice only one activity, which is "selling invoices." The official stressed that confronting this phenomenon requires a collective mobilization of various economic actors, warning that some of the structured companies themselves have become victims of their dealings with this type of illegal companies. This new campaign comes to confirm the tax authorities' strictness in confronting fraud and tax forgery practices, within the framework of their efforts to enhance transparency and restore confidence in the business environment in the region.
