Tax inspectors fine Herald Publishing over payroll filings

TALAS — The ISEZ tax service has fined the Herald Publishing Company, which publishes the Talas Herald, for errors in its payroll reporting, at the end of an audit that began this spring.

The company said it had paid the fine and corrected the filings. In a statement, the editor, Elmira Beishenova, said the paper did not dispute the inspectors’ arithmetic but regarded the inspection as selective. “We are not aware of a similar audit of any other newspaper this year,” she said. The tax service said audits were assigned according to its normal procedures.

The audit followed the withdrawal of advertising from the paper by several state-owned and state-licensed companies after the Herald reported the removal of rival candidates from last year’s gubernatorial ballot. The paper estimates that it has lost about a third of its advertising revenue. The companies have said their decisions were commercial.

Last year the Talas District Court found for the Talas Commercial Development Group on one point of its libel suit over the paper’s 2013 reports on land transfers, ordering a correction and damages of 200,000 som and dismissing the rest of the claim.