laws
taxes
business

Employee benefits and scam schemes

June 30, 2020
Natalia Gorpinchenko
Accountex Accounting
Since April, it has been possible to apply for unemployment benefit compensation from the Unemployment Fund three times. It seems that only the very lazy did not try to take advantage of this opportunity. Some even attempted to scheme.  

According to the Unemployment Fund's data, they have rejected applications for the following reasons:  
– Registration of employment in TÖR significantly after 01.03.2020  
– Retroactive employment contract concluded with a board member without ever paying a salary  
– The actual workload of the employee is not shown – TÖR displays something different from what is indicated on the application  
– Retroactively changing employees' salary data to increase their salaries  
– Falsified documents. For example: an employer informs an employee on 28.02.2020 that their salary will be reduced due to a state of emergency declared in the country. However, the emergency was only declared on 12.03.2020  
– Employees' salaries have indeed been reduced, but starting from 01.04.2020, while the benefit is claimed for March  
– Employers do not pay employees €150. The Labor Disputes Committee has received such feedback from employees  
– The employer deposits all employee benefits into the company's account  

According to the Unemployment Fund, there have been many schemes and frauds. This raises the question – why are they doing this? Why are people cheating?  

I propose two possible reasons:  
1. This is the mentality of Estonian residents  
2. Business conditions in Estonia are not sufficiently favorable, so everyone tries to get bread on their table  

What do you think is the reason?