Proceeding from the importance of the implementation of the Law on Enforcement and Security for the work of local self-government bodies, and with the aim of establishing tax discipline, the Union of Municipalities of Montenegro submitted three amendments to the Draft Law on Amendments to this legal act to the state parliament, which is already before the members of parliament.
The first amendment envisages enabling compulsory enforcement from the monetary funds of the enforcement debtor, that is, it eliminates the limitation to real estate, shares, and stakes in a commercial company, which until now was the only possible means of enforcement and which jeopardizes the operations of commercial companies founded by the municipality. This is particularly a problem when the claim of the enforcement creditor is disproportionately smaller in relation to the value of the real estate, shares, and stakes in the commercial company against which the enforcement is being carried out.
The second amendment proposes that the status of an enforceable document also be defined for an administrative act ordering the fulfillment of an obligation by a natural person. Since these acts currently do not have that status, a legal gap has been created because, through the Central Bank of Montenegro, it is not possible to carry out enforcement of administrative decisions establishing the monetary obligations of natural persons, particularly tax decisions. By legally establishing the characteristic of an enforceable document for these acts, automatism in tax collection is enabled, the necessary tax discipline is established, and the occurrence of limitation periods is prevented in a large number of cases in which, for various reasons, the decision cannot be delivered, leaving an enormous amount of tax uncollected.
The current legal provision stipulates that, for the purposes of this law, a decision in administrative proceedings is understood to mean a ruling and a conclusion issued by a state administration authority and another state body, as well as by a commercial company or another legal entity adopted in the exercise of public powers, while a settlement in administrative proceedings is understood to mean a settlement concluded in accordance with the law governing general administrative procedure. This provision omits local self-government bodies and local administration bodies that issue decisions in administrative proceedings in the exercise of the rights and obligations of citizens prescribed by the Law on Local Self-Government and a number of special laws, so the third amendment proposes a supplement to this provision in this sense, with the aim of ensuring legal certainty.
