RIGA, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -- The Latvian tax authority's treatment of the country's leading classified ads website ss.lv may cause an outflow of other online businesses from Latvia, the industry's representatives warned at a news conference here on Monday.
The news conference was called following last week's news that the Latvian State Revenue Service had ordered a shutdown of ss.lv after its owners refused to provide information about persons who use the website's services to sell used transport vehicles.
Access to ss.lv was blocked on Monday, but the advertising business had changed its domain name to ss.com by that time.
Andris Grikis, the head of Latvian IT company Inbokss, and Juris Mendzins, chief executive officer (CEO) of TVnet news portal, described the tax authority's methods as extreme and warned that it might scare away online companies operating in Latvia.
Sportacentrs.com, a widely popular sports news website, for instance, has already been registered abroad, they said.
Lawyer Janis Zelmenis who commented on the legal aspects of the Revenue Service's dispute with ss.lv said the tax authority's actions made no sense to him and that the website's shutdown was a disproportionate measure.
But the Revenue Service's director-general Ilze Cirule said on public radio on Monday that the tax authority's decision to close down ss.lv was legally correct.
"Our intention has never been to shut down their business...We just want the company as a law abiding, future-oriented Latvian enterprise to help us detect dishonest car dealers," Cirule said.
She said that the supervision of online commerce and the car dealing segment had been the Revenue Service's priorities since last year. The tax authority needs to see what is going on in the car trade and who makes money from these operations.
The main point is about businesses' cooperation with state authorities in clamping down on tax evasion, the head of the Revenue Service said. Enditem
