Today the informative report on the proposal about new changes in tax, prepared by the Ministry of Finance, will be discussed during the meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers.
Jānis Bordāns, Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Justice: “Pursuant to request of the conservatives and the National Union, the Ministry of Finance has developed its initial proposal, under which it was planned to increase a number of taxes. According to our opinion, the Ministry of Finance is currently on the right way, but we still miss a clear proposal for family benefits, reduction of the burden on taxes in the sector of small and medium salaries and measures for minimization of bureaucracy in the activities of the State Revenue Service. The issue of demography is crucially important for Latvia, therefore, in the perspective of the budget the conservatives would be ready to derogate from the requirement to increase the differentiated non-taxable minimum up to 500 euros, if clear support for families would be offered instead of that.”
Besides, J.Bordāns is concerned that the Ministry of Finance and the Prime Minister, when talking about the tax reform, still avoid from discussion about decrease of the immovable property tax (IPT). This issue actually is not covered in the informative report of the Ministry of Finance.
J.Bordāns: “I hope that the fact that there is still no proposal from the Ministry of Finance with regard to decrease of the IPT is not related to the fact that the Ministry of Finance wishes to compensate the decrease of municipal income with increase of income from the IPT. We will carefully follow up this issue and not permit that inhabitants are being misled this way.”
Like it is known, last year the government supported the proposal of the New Conservative Party to increase the differenced non-taxable minimum from 230 euros to 300 euros as of 1 January 2020 and to increase the minimum salary to 500 euros as of 1 January 2021.