The initiative to impose a common tax in agriculture is opportune, but in the variant proposed to Parliament for adoption is defective, said experts of the Center for the Analysis and Prevention of Corruption (CAPC), who appraised the bill. In a news conference at IPN, they said that the projected effects will be reduced to zero if the identified discrepancies are not removed from the bill.

Radu Jigau said some of the arguments invoked by the Ministry of Agriculture, which drafted the bill, run counter to the bill’s norms. He made reference to the informative note of the bill, where it is said that the common tax in agriculture will substitute another six taxes, including the land tax, the property tax, the income tax, the road tax, the tax for water and the local taxes). But Article 1, paragraph (3) of the bill stipulates that the taxed entities do not pay only the tax on incomes from entrepreneurial activity and the property tax. They pay the other taxes in the generally set method.

“So, there are certain disagreements between what the author says it wants to do and what it proposes directly,” said Radu Jigau.

He added that Moldova already has similar experience. In 2004, there was adopted the law on the common tax in agriculture, which was later abrogated. That bill was very good.

Given the importance and consequences of the given initiative, the CAPC recommends that the document should be transmitted to civil society for the formulation of recommendations and the appraisals and syntheses of the recommendations made during the public consultations should be finally annexed to the note to the bill.

The assessment was carried out within the project “Vulnerability appraisal of draft normative acts in terms of human rights” that is supported financially by the Civil Rights Defenders of Sweden.