Cards must be ordered by employers, and by now a few thousand cards have already been issued. Next year, the working time registration card must be used by every builder working on a larger construction.
According to Siim Tamm, development specialist of the Tax and Customs Board, many builders are familiar with such a solution, for example, from the practice of our northern neighbours, where a special “Valtti card” is used as an access pass.
"The purpose of registering working time with a card is to ensure fair competitive environment. This means that only people who are correctly formalised to work, of whom the main contractors and the state have a clear overview, and are paid fair wage, may work on constructions,” he added.
The law already obliges main contractors to register large constructions and subcontracting chains in the e-services environment of the ETCB. The employees’ task is to tap the cards when going to the constructions, and the ETCB will receive information about the time the builders spent on constructions on a daily basis. If builders have the cards, the main contractors can also allow the use of a mobile app, for example, instead of tapping the card.
Using cards is mandatory in constructions where the duration of construction work exceeds 30 working days and at least 20 people are at work at a time; or the workload exceeds 500 man-days. More than 100 such constructions have already been registered within two months.
Orders for cards are received and cards are issued by Hansab AS, the company that won the procurement, on the order of the state.
“In cooperation with the ETCB, we have developed a special e-environment where orders for cards can be submitted by board members of construction companies and employees authorised by them. Orders that have been properly submitted and paid for will be fulfilled within three working days and cards will be posted according to the delivery method specified by the customer. According to the terms of the procurement, the price of one card is 6.67 euros, plus value added tax,” said Tex Vertmann, head of Hansab's card department.
According to Vertmann, the test period that started in October has been active, and considering the feedback received from construction companies, several changes have been made for a more convenient service. Thus, the prepayment invoice solution and the download of the order confirmations have been added. The possibility of saving unfinished orders and picking the cards up from the Hansab parcel machine will be added soon.
The estimated tax loss in the construction sector has been more than 20 million euros per year for many years. The ETCB will apply the data collected based on subcontracting chains, constructions and employee registration in its risk analyses, which will search for anomalies in the data and thereby identify constructions that need further control.
“Since all the regulations related to the implementation of the law have entered into force and it is possible to order employee cards, the entrepreneurs must start fulfilling all the obligations arising from the law. The ETCB's next step will be to check compliance with the requirements,” added Tamm.
