The National Alliance for Local Economic Development (NALED) is preparing the third register of Para fiscal and non-tax levies in Serbia in order to propose to the Ministry of Finance reform in that area and relief of the economy, Beta confirmed in that organization.
The key direction of the reform, as the head of the public relations service in NALED, Ivan Radak, said, is to determine what the fees, charges and Para fiscal charges are.
“NALED is committed to making a register of Para fiscal, non-tax levies, to making criteria for the amount of taxes, as a real cost of the state administration, and to determine whether the cost corresponds to the quality of the service,” said Radak.
He added that, not so infrequently, citizens do not receive any service for a fee or duty.
The registry of Para fiscal levies, in the development of which the American Organization for International Cooperation (USAID) also participates, as Radak said, should prevent the Republic or the local community from introducing new obligations for the economy at its discretion.
Radak said that it is now estimated that there are several thousand different duties at the republic and local level, and that in 2014, when the second record was made, there were 384 non-tax levies, of which 247 were Para fiscal.
He said that there is a lot of illogicality in prescribing those levies, and one is to pay the “firm fee”, as a Para fiscal levy, and in fact it should be a tax levy.
The honorary president of the Union of Employers of Serbia, Nebojsa Atanackovic, said that the economy is constantly asking for the abolition of Para fiscal levies that are part of the business environment and new investments.
“When, due to the constant request to abolish those duties, some are abolished, others are quickly introduced,” said Atanackovic.
According to him, businessmen would prefer to have that expense on increasing the salaries of employees because they would be stimulated to work better.
He pointed out that some taxes are higher than in countries with which Serbia can be compared, as for employees’ salaries, while the value added tax (VAT) is lower than in Croatia or Hungary.
Atanackovic assessed that it is illogical and that the property tax is calculated on the same as on the illegal as on the legal object.
“Many duties have been copied from developed countries that can afford it, and Serbia is poor and companies do not have the economic strength to withstand and develop under that cost pressure,” Atanackovic said.
Instead of, as he assessed, Para fiscal levies being reduced and suppressed by 30 percent of the economy that works illegally and does not pay its obligations, they are “cut for those who work legally”.
According to him, there are many illogicalities in devising these charges, such as the fact that everyone pays a tax due to environmental pollution, which was introduced in July, even though the economy opposed it.
“A similar example is the ‘dyeing’ of petrol, that is, the analysis to determine whether it was procured in legal channels, and then that cost is included in the price of petrol,” Atanackovic told, Danas reports.
