More taxes lowered ahead of elections

TIRANA, April 10 – The government continues to make more tax cuts in what seems to be another strenuous effort to gain or keep as many voters as possible.
This week, a cabinet meeting showed that the government was determined to cut in half the tax on the used cars and also lower other taxes on the agriculture business and farmers.
Last weekend, Finance Minister Ridvan Bode pledged that the ruling Democratic Party will not increase taxes, but will continue to reduce tax burden on business and individuals.
In a comment on his Facebook page, the minister said that the recent proposed changes to the Law on National Taxes will halve the annual tax on used vehicles. The effect of the changes to the law is estimated around 2.5 billion lek, according to Bode.
In another case, Justice Minister Eduard Halimi wrote in his Facebook site that the salaries of the judges and prosecutors would be raised and the lowest one would be 100,000 leks.
It seems that the political fight for the country’s economy in general remains the main line, focus of the political parties ahead of the June 23 polls.
Opposition Socialist Party continues to criticize the government for what they considered as failures.
Every day a Socialist lawmaker comes out to say what is wrong with the government’s work. One of them, Eduard Shalsi came out earlier this week to say that the government has not kept the pledge on turning the country into a small energetic superpower in the region. On the contrary, he said, the power price has been raised by 80 percent since this government took power in 2005.
The opposition also said that most of the big privatizations done by this government have failed, mentioning power distributor CEZ as prime example.
However, taxes remain the focus in the economic debate.
The government sticks to its policy of reducing taxes and supporting the flat tax they have introduced for many years now. They claim that was the reason why they have collected more taxes and pledged to continue that line.
The Socialists, on their side, have turned to the progressive tax.