LFMI has examined draft amendments to the Law on State Social Insurance that propose public disclosure of the average wage and state social security contributions of insured individuals. LFMI calls for withdrawing the draft law for the following grounds:
Firstly, public disclosure of the average wage would infringe on companies’ privacy and confidentiality. For competition reasons, companies do not disclose their operating costs as these reflect their business models, therefore the information regarding the average wage should remain confidential.
Secondly, public disclosure of the average wage would not help to fight against undeclared labour, because public authorities responsible for combatting illegal employment already have access to the payroll data on companies and individuals. People who would gain access to the average wages paid by companies (the employees, contractors, partners, etc.) are not charged with the responsibility to fight undeclared labour and have no capacity to do it.
Finally, in 2013 LFMI conducted a survey that showed that the primary cause of undeclared work in Lithuania was high taxation of labour. So in order to reduce the size of the shadow labour market, it is imperative to lower taxation of labour.
The full text in Lithuanian can be found at http://www.llri.lt/naujienos/ekonomine-politika/socialine-apsauga/18386/lrinka
