Morocco Launches Major Tax Probe into Construction Sector Invoice Fraud

Company executives, particularly in the construction sector, are in the sights of the control services of the General Directorate of Taxes (DGI). They are suspected of having exploited often uninformed self-employed workers to "set up a vast network of tax evasion and produce thousands of invoices without their knowledge," reports Hespress. They would have fraudulently used the stamps of self-employed workers on forged invoices detected in the tax returns of companies subject to documentary and field audits.

The detection of these forged invoices follows the tax regularization notifications that the control services have sent to several self-employed workers. Some of them were far from imagining that their stamps had been used to produce fraudulent invoices to justify costs related to fictitious work and services, with amounts far exceeding the annual ceiling of the taxable turnover under the self-employed regime, set at 500,000 dirhams for industrial, commercial and craft activities, and 200,000 dirhams for services.

The tax administration’s control services discovered that the entrepreneurs had convinced workers, mostly from rural areas and with limited education, to register for this scheme, obtain a self-employed card, open bank accounts and acquire checkbooks, in exchange for financial incentives and promises of subcontracted employment. They also discovered the exploitation of self-employed checks by company executives, mainly in the construction and public works sector, as part of fraudulent operations aimed at defrauding third parties.

A "service" they were able to obtain by offering attractive facilities to the presumed self-employed workers. Among these facilities, financial assistance generally not exceeding 30,000 dirhams granted to the presumed self-employed workers and intended to cover the start-up costs of their activity, in order to encourage them to register on the official platform and obtain the self-employed status. Another proposal: the company executives motivate them to choose the service sector as their professional activity on paper, promising to help them find potential clients.