An app in Oświęcim will catch those who evade paying garbage fee

Until now, and due to regulatory flaws, they avoided it

The Polish city of Oświęcim will soon become better equipped to catch people who do not pay their waste collection fee. As the city reported last week, from January next year they will launch a mobile app, capable of identifying residents not included in garbage declarations – an act that until now went unsanctioned, due to regulatory flaws.

Improved tax collection with software solutions

At the end of last month, Oświęcim concluded an agreement with a local software company, on the purchase of an application license that promises to bring back some of the lost municipal revenues from waste collection. In particular, it will help the municipality find those who live in the city but are not included in the declarations submitted by property owners for waste collection fees.

Until recently, Oświęcim was faced with lack of an appropriate statutory provision that would allow obtaining this information. However, in September, thanks to regulatory changes, local governments gained the opportunity to use the data of organizational units to verify declarations.

Thus, Oświęcim quickly decided to capitalize on this new power by purchasing a helpful app. The application retrieves data from the registers of the city and its subordinate units. Then it compares them with the number of people indicated in the submitted declarations. As a result, it will indicate the property addresses and the owners who provided false data, as a city representative explained.

The city hopes that the tool will prove effective and will be able to detect people who live in the city but do not pay for waste collection. The result will be increased tax revenues, which is particularly important in the impoverishing times of Covid-19.