CONEP President Celso Marranzini, yesterday added his voice to those calling for a national tax amnesty. Recently famed businessman Jos? Luis Corripio ("Pepin") called for a limited tax amnesty as a way for the government to get the private sector to clean and correct their accounting books and begin paying what they really owe in taxes. Corripio also called for simplification of the DR’s tax bureaucracy and paperwork, with all forms made easy-to-use and all rules clear, precise and easy to comprehend, apply, enforce and inspect. Both ideas were promptly embraced by two major business groups, the National Union of Businessmen (UNE) and the Association of Industrial Firms of Herrera (AEIH). The head of the Internal Revenue Directorate-General (DGII), Juan Hern?ndez, has said that the Fern?ndez government would support a "conditional" amnesty as long as it was established by a law passed by Congress. He has pointed out that the Administration’s first economic reform package submitted to Congress in 1997 included a type of amnesty where taxpayers would have paid a symbolic fraction of tax owed when they came clean in their reporting to DGII.
