No more taxes

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC.- More than 65 organizations representing different businesses through the National Council of Private Enterprise (CONEP) warned yesterday that they would not support any new taxes or tariffs, and they insist on their call for that adoption of an austerity policy in public spending and rationality in the assignation of the budget resources.

The organizations, after meeting on Wednesday to hear and evaluate the partial results of the fist phase of the Summit for National Unity in the face of the World Economic Crisis, also rejected the congressional initiative of Senator Luis Rene Canaan that intends to apply even more taxes on check and electronic transactions that already have a RD$0.15 tax.

The organizations, meeting at the offices of CONEP, said that they considered that the initiative of the senator is inappropriate and contrary to the political necessity of recovery and strengthening of the national finances, which they feel has provoked the decrease in financial intermediaries and a turn towards informal relations, in addition to the costs that this represents to consumers and users of the local banking system.

In the same manner, they also reject the initiative of the legislator that would impose a 1% tax on the income of the Administrators of Health Risks (more like HMOs), under the argument that these funds would be used to attend the demands for higher wages from other sectors of the population.

The groups point out that this would add another distortion to the national economy and an anti-stimulus for savings and investment, both from national sources as well as foreign, besides creating an unfortunate precedent, worsening even more the disparity in an even and fair fiscal treatment not only of the economic agents but also to the population that will be, in the end, who will pay for it.

They said, "These initiatives of legislator Canaan duplicate the tax efforts of sectors that already contribute significantly to the treasury and obscure the investment climate that needs to be strengthened at this juncture."