Vida no longer tax chief – Reactions

Budapest, July 20 (MTI) – Ildiko Vida has resigned from her post as head of Hungary’s tax authority NAV, the economy ministry announced on Monday.

Until a successor is appointed, vice president Arpad Varga will head the authority, the ministry said in a statement.

Vida tendered her resignation on May 20 and relevant laws allow for two months of a notice period, it said.

According to the document, the new tax chief will be selected after key components in a planned reform to the authority have been implemented.

The statement said that Hungary’s economy had entered a new era of steady growth, which required changes in the structure of the tax authority. The new organisation will be more efficient and more customer friendly, and “more compatible with the new structure of the economy”, it said.

Authors of the document praised Vida’s role in stabilising Hungary’s public finance and integrating the tax authority with the national customs office. Under Vida’s leadership tax revenues had considerably increased and the illegal economy was reduced. It was also under her tenure that online tills were introduced to link retail shops directly to NAV’s system, thus removing opportunities for illegal deals.

Commenting on the news, the green LMP party suggested that Vida should have resigned much earlier, over what the party sees as NAV’s reluctance to launch a probe into major VAT fraud reported to the authority a year and a half ago. In a statement, the party insisted that “the government was covering up” for Vida ever since November 2013, and “did not make her resign before it saw as necessary in its war with oligarchs”. The government’s secrecy over the resignation, tendered two months ago, is unacceptable, LMP said.