The previous Government increased the taxes for people with low incomes and decreased them for those with large incomes. The current Government is determined to do inversely – to gradually raise the taxes and to make sure that those with large incomes pay these taxes, but will diminish the burden on the people with low incomes, stated Prime Minister Maia Sandu, IPN reports.
In a news conference held alongside the chief of the IMF mission visiting Chisinau, Maia Sandu said the current Government, including through the memorandum with the IMF, is committed to struggle against all those who should have paid taxes, but didn’t do it. “These, earning millions, hundreds of millions and billions, avoided the state budget. Therefore, we do not have enough money to pay decent pensions, to pay salaries to doctors and teachers,” stated the Prime Minister.
Asked about the bill to extend the right to work based on the entrepreneur’s patent until 2022, the Premier said this is to be discussed with all the interested sides. “This law is designed to create better conditions for those who are involved in commercial activities, especially the category of very poor people. During these three years when we travelled through the country and talked to the people, we met women aged 80 who sold what they could at the market to earn something and probably earned not more than 50-100 lei a week to augment somehow their very low incomes,” noted the official.
According to Maia Sandu, it is not right to demand that these people should comply with very sophisticated conditions – to issue sales slips, etc. The very poor people have to practice such activities in order to survive until things are put right in the economy, in the social sector and a decent pension is ensured for them. Measures will be taken where the patent is used to avoid paying taxes by person who can pay these taxes. “We should start to fight tax evasion where hundreds of millions of lei are earned and taxes are not paid. This would be a correct state policy,” she said.
For his part, IMF Mission Chief Ruben Atoyan said the experts reached an agreement as to the budgetary-fiscal measures that need to be taken to neutralize the deviations from the agreed policies caused by the adopted packages of tax initiatives, capital amnesty and tax amnesty that undermined the objectives of the program with the IMF and led to greater pressure on the state budget. The authorities plan to approve an appropriate rectification to the 2019 budget in order to reduce the budgetary-fiscal vulnerabilities without affecting the priority social costs.
