STA, 10 February 2020 - The opposition National Party (Slovenska Nacionalna Stranka- SNS) is worried about foreigners registering fictitious residence to claim a permanent residence permit, social transfers, tax relief and other benefits. It thus urges a review of the revenue service's decisions granting foreigners the status of tax residents and a better control of residence registration.
SNS is the same party proposing changes to Slovenia’s residence registration law to require individuals to state ethnicity, religion, native language
The SNS would like the Finance Ministry to review all the decisions with which the Slovenian Financial Administration (FURS) treated some 25,000 foreigners who were registered as residents in Slovenia but then referred to work abroad in the last five years.
SNS leader, Zmago Jelinčić, discussing the proposal on Facebook
It says that many did not meet a single condition for the tax residence status, while the unlawful decisions issued by FURS enabled them to claim tax relief for dependent family members, which significantly reduced or even offsets the taxes they had to pay in Slovenia completely.
The Interior Ministry should meanwhile task administrative units around the country to introduce oversight of the number of persons registered at a single address while the police should check the actual situation on the ground, the party said in a press release on Wednesday.
The issue of fictitious registrations of residence came to the spotlight last year when a series of reports showed there were flats and sometimes even commercial premises where dozens and sometimes over a hundred persons, mostly foreigners, were registered.
In the Maribor Administrative Unit alone, an internal oversight in the autumn found potentially fictitious cases of residence registration involving over a thousand residents at 81 addresses, identifying 27 addresses as potentially problematic.
To address the issue, the government adopted changes to the residence registration act in December, which have already been endorsed by the parliamentary Home Affairs Committee and are now waiting to be passed by parliament.
