Judgments|According to the Court of Appeal, the act was intended to at least postpone tax payment.
Helsinki the Court of Appeal has sentenced two people to suspended prison terms in the event organizer Live Entertainment Finland’s tax fraud case. Earlier, the district court had dismissed the charges.
The former director of Live Entertainment Finland and the woman who managed the company’s financial administration were convicted of gross tax fraud. The company that organized concerts of international artists in Finland was declared bankrupt in the fall of 2019.
The time of committing the crime spanned from February 2017 to September of the same year. According to the court of appeals, the woman gave the tax authorities on behalf of the company since 2016 tax returns containing incorrect information, due to which the value added tax payable by the company was too low and the company was also unjustifiably refunded the value added tax.
The Court of Appeal held that the company’s director was responsible for fulfilling the VAT notification obligation based on the VAT Act, and that the false notifications had been given with his knowledge and responsibility.
Court of Appeal according to which the defendants’ intention was at least not primarily to be exempted from the tax completely or once and for all. The company announced the invoiced value added tax from December 2016 with a replacement value added tax in September 2017.
Before this, in July 2017, the payment plan of the company and the Tax Administration for previous tax debts had ended, when the company had received the payments. According to the Court of Appeal, the director was aware that no new tax debt could arise during the payment plan.
“The said temporal connection partly supports the fact that it was not a mistake and that the company has at this stage at least tried to postpone the tax payment,” the Court of Appeal ruled in its verdict.
The company’s manager was sentenced to one year and ten months in suspended prison. The woman received a one-year suspended sentence. In addition, they were sentenced to jointly and severally reimburse the Tax Administration a little over 200,000 euros. The Court of Appeal gave its decision in December.