Second example: Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis cited in a press conference in Riga yesterday the fact that some companies, including state-owned companies like Latvian Railways, had tried to cheat the social security system by significantly raising the wages of some of its employees (in his example from 1,000 lats a month to 12,000 lats a month), thus apparently raising their pay into the social security system. That way, if a person gets laid off, they'd get 70 percent of the new and improved wage.
Now two recent quotes from my blog interpreting yesterday's comment from the Economy Minister - (Viz: "Representatives sitting in Washington and educated at Yale do not fully understand what is going on in Latvia”)
"To provide with logic behind quote of the economics minister, I believe he thought that the EC and IMF does not realize the scope and importance of grey economy in the country. With that figure hard to estimate (ranging from 15%-40%). Any increase of Tax base will only push the economy on the gray side both for individuals (tax exemption on income earned) and for companies (unaccounted cash revenue, forgone taxes,etc). Thus resulting in even less tax revenue that initially had and larger budget deficit to balance. As for VAT tax, as a sign of protest, some of the local companies have publically annouced the full closure of their business if the VAT is raised to 23%."
"Yep, stupid comment when at the same time you are reaching out your hands to receive their money... That said, the IMF does not really fully understand if they think they can introduce e.g. a progressive income tax and raise more revenue. Very hard to do in a country that does not believe that higher taxes will benefit the population and where tax avoidance is an art mastered by most."
As one wise woman said yesterday "Not everything in Latvia is what it appears to be".
1 comment:
Hugh, look at Belgium, here also everyone thinks that national sport is cheating the state, especially if the state is rich...
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